Heart patients in Ghana will no longer travel out of the country for services as a team of medical doctors at the Cardio-Thoracic Centre of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi, have successfully implanted a double-chamber pacemaker device in a 70-year-old patient.

A pacemaker is a small device that is placed under the skin in your chest to help control your heartbeat. It is used to help your heart beat more regularly if you have an irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia), particularly a slow one.

"The Cardio Team of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) continues to make history with the conduct of dual chamber pacemaker implantation procedures without any external assistance", the Hospital said in a statement after the surgery.

It said, the work was made possible by "a six member hospital team, made up of two Cardiologists, Dr. Adu-Boakye and Dr. Lambert Appiah".

"Other members of the team were Dr. Samuel Kontoh, Pharmacist, Ms. Adowaa Asare and Angelina Naa Abbey Bamfo, Scrub Nurses and Mr. Antwi, Radiographer", the release added.

Speaking after the procedure, the two Cardiologists emphasized that the hospital has highly trained specialists to deliver world-class cardiology services to the public and that given the necessary support, heart patients in the country will not need to travel out of the country for such services.

They appealed to corporate Ghana and good spirited individuals to support the hospital’s Cardio Team with modern equipment and logistics including a Catetherisation laboratory CATHLAB to enable the team to provide a full range of cardiology services to the public.

They said the patient was doing very well and that more are on the line to be attended to in the coming weeks.

The gender of the patient was not immediately revealed.

See the pictures below:

Source: Ghanaguardian.com [with facts from KATH]