Early Experience of Laparoscopic Surgery in a Teaching Hospital in Rural Nigeria.

INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND:Laparoscopic surgery is still at its budding phase in low resource countries. The reasons for this include poor financing of the health sector and lack of trained personnel. The aim of this article is to highlight our initial experiences, our challenges in setting up laparoscopic surgery in a private tertiary hospital in rural southwestern Nigeria, and to share our efforts towards alleviating these challenges.METHODOLOGY:A retrospective analysis of all patient who had laparoscopic surgery between January 2019 and December 2020 at the Surgery Department of Babcock University Teaching Hospital, Ilisan, Ogun State was carried out. Their sociodemographic, preoperative and intraoperative data along with postoperative records were subjected to descriptive analysis.RESULTS:During the period, 19 patients had laparoscopic procedures: 12(63.2%) males and 7 (36.8%) females with age ranging from 4 to 63years. The most common indication for laparoscopic surgery was appendicitis, representing 84.2% of the procedures. Most of the procedures were done on emergency basis (63.1%) while 36.9% were elective procedures. All the procedures were therapeutic though in 21.1% we started with diagnostic intent but intra-operatively we proceed to therapeutic procedure following confirmation of the diagnosis. The duration of the procedures ranged from 40 minutes to 107 minutes with a mean duration of 74.8±19 minutes. No intra or post operative complications were recorded in this cohort of patients. The mean duration of hospital stay was 2 days.CONCLUSION:Laparoscopic surgery is safe and feasible in low resource setting. We recommend that centers embarking on laparoscopic surgeries should start with diagnostic procedures and gradually incorporate therapeutic procedures as they improve in proficiency.