- The morbidly obese patient underwent a gastric bypass in a private hospital but the intervention was deficient and put his health at risk.
- When he went to see the IMSS surgeons, he suffered from an abdominal catastrophe, that is, a complex and multicausal syndrome.
- A multidisciplinary team made up of personnel from General Gastrointestinal Surgery, Anesthesiology, Internal Medicine, Intensive Care, Nutrition and Nursing managed to save the patient who is now in recovery.
Going with medical personnel who do not have sufficient training can have deadly consequences. The clearest example was carried out by surgeons from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) who treated a patient who was in a rather delicate state of health. It all came about because she first went to a private hospital to undergo an operation to lose weight, but the service she received was quite poor.
Description of the clinical case
The protagonists of this feat that allowed a tragedy to be avoided were the specialists of the High Specialty Medical Unit (UMAE) of the National Medical Center (CMN) “Adolfo Ruiz Cortines” in Veracruz. His work consisted of reconstructing the stomach and intestine of a patient with abdominal catastrophe (complex and multicausal syndrome).
In this sense, Octavio Ávila Mercado, professor of the General Surgery Course at the UMAE, commented that the patient Leobardo Alejandro “N”, 34 years old, was morbidly obese with a weight of 160 kilos. Therefore, he decided to have a gastric bypass in a private hospital, which brought adverse consequences to his state of health.
In addition, Ávila Mercado added that the patient was treated in other institutions and when he arrived at the IMSS he had various surgeries, with a diagnosis of abdominal catastrophe and 90 centimeters of functional intestine, when normal is around 6 meters.
“Leobardo comes from extra-institutional care, cases like Leobardo’s of a hostile abdomen, that is, an abdomen that has undergone several interventions with sequelae of a previous intervention, are treated in this UMAE in a multidisciplinary way with all the teams: from Anesthesiology, Internal Medicine, Intensive Care, Nutrition, Nursing and even Psychology, commanded by the Gastrointestinal General Surgery team”.
Leobardo Alejandro was a patient with ileostomy (an opening in the belly, to allow the passage of feces) on the right side; left-sided colostomy (a type of opening that allows the colon to be attached to the wall of the abdomen) and penrose (soft, flexible latex tube that allows fluid and blood to escape to prevent pooling in an incision) on both sides. All this for just over two years.
IMSS surgeons performed more than 15 operations on the patient
During his process, Leobardo lost a lot of weight to the point of not being able to walk because his functional intestine was so short that it made it impossible for his body to absorb the necessary nutrients. Reason for which he suffered from malnutrition and had to be supported with food supplements, while his improvement was slow.
“In this case we returned to restore the anatomy that was affected at the time, we performed more than 15 surgeries and thanks to the work of this entire multidisciplinary team, after three years our patient is already incorporated into his daily life having the proper functions.”
On his occasion, Leobardo Alejandro stated: “I had a bariatric operation, a private gastric bypass, in a hospital in another state. I had serious complications and well, I arrived here at the Social Security medical unit where they treated me. My case was a very extreme case, very complicated.”
He added that he was attended by the specialist Octavio Ávila Mercado, “who along with his entire team did everything possible, as well as the entire institution to move my case forward, despite the fact that his process was very long, three years and I feel very grateful. with the attention received.
The surgeon indicated that “Leobardo weighed 45 kilos, currently he weighs 75 kilos, which is a healthy weight for his height of 1.87 meters; this allows them to carry out their daily activities, without the need for support, gradually reintegrating into a productive life”.
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