BFIRST Overseas Trip to Children’s Surgical Centre, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
In November, a combined BFIRST/ BSSH/ BAHT and Singaporean team of consultant and registrar surgeons and a hand therapist, visited the Children's Surgical Centre in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Mr Wee Lam (Consultant Hand and Plastic Surgeon), Miss Gill Smith (Consultant Hand and Plastic Surgeon) and Abigail Shaw (Plastic Surgery Registrar) represented BFIRST. This long-running relationship, with biannual visits, was established in 2013. Over the years, the focus has been training the local Cambodian plastic and orthopaedic surgeons, as well as the physiotherapist, in specialist areas, including brachial plexus, microsurgery, congenital hand and burns contractures. This trip was no different and the main emphasis was the transfer of knowledge and skill to the local team.
The Children’s Surgical Centre was established in 1998 by UK trained Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgeon, Dr Jim Gollogly. Running as a tertiary teaching hospital, mostly providing reconstructive surgery, it provides around 15,000 consultations and over 2,000 surgical procedures each year. Each day starts with a large MDT meeting, where the patients are brought in to be examined and to discuss which patients will be operated on that day. There are three main theatres in one large operating room, divided by glass partitions, that operate simultaneously. Clinic also runs continuously throughout the day, with patients travelling large distances across the country to be seen at CSC.
During the week, the team took the local surgeons through a variety of cases, including cleft hand closure, polydactyly excision, hyperselective neurectomy and tendon transfers for spasticity, free-functioning muscle transfer and scapulothoracic fusion for brachial plexus injuries and a variety of burn contracture releases to the upper and lower limbs. The local clinic staff, theatre scrub teams and ward nurses worked exceptionally hard to support the long hours and high case-load generated during the visit. Throughout both clinic and theatre, the visiting team benefited from numerous opportunities to learn from the local surgeons, gaining valuable insights that strengthened their understanding of the cases in the local context. The trip also highlighted the important of long-standing partnerships; not only fostering the growth and confidence of the local surgeons, but also enabling the safe staging of more complex procedures for patients across multiple visits.
There was also an opportunity to share food with our hosts, including a pizza lunch at CSC and wonderful Khmer cuisine at the home of the CSC founder and his wife.
We would like to thank Dr Jim Gollogly and his wife Kanya for their hospitalit during our trip; Dr Saqib Noor and all the surgeons, nurses, physiotherapists and staff at CSC for their kindness and facilitating our trip, and of course, the patients and their families – some of whom the team have got to know well over several visits.