A Third Year of Impact at KATH

By Dr. Michael Poch

Each year, our collaboration with KATH grows stronger, and the impact deeper. We’re proud to support local faculty and residents through hands-on training and shared expertise, helping build sustainable urological care for the future.

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Dear Friends and Supporters, we’re thrilled to share highlights from our recent IVUmed trip to Kumasi, Ghana, where we partnered once again with the dedicated team at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH). This marks our third consecutive year working together to expand access to urologic care and training in the region.

Our team arrived on Saturday 8/16 afternoon and quickly got to work the following day. On Sunday, we held a full clinic day, evaluating over 25 patients. Due to the high volume and complexity of cases, we split into two teams to ensure every patient received the attention they needed. A developed surgical care plans, we were actually blessed to have access to an ultrasound machine in the clinic and performed a few bedside ultrasounds evaluating bladder tumors and kidney obstruction. The following four days were spent in the operating theater, where we performed: 13 major surgeries, including 6 radical cystectomies, 5 with continent diversion, 4 radical prostatectomies, and two radical nephrectomies.

The cases addressed a range of complex urologic conditions. Just as importantly we were able to perform and teach a number of endoscopic procedures from bladder tumor resections to BPH procedures. This is a skill that the residents benefit from the most as their access to appropriate equipment and educational opportunities are limited. In addition, proper endoscopic skills can have long last impacts on the community for diagnosis and therapeutic case management. Friday, we closed the trip with a series of lectures by our residents and fellows, highlighted by talks on urodynamics, urinary diversions and the basics of laparoscopy Interesting Findings and Notes from the Trip We continue to see a skewed proportion of female patients with bladder cancer. 7 of the 8 open bladder operations for Stage II disease were female, this incidence is the opposite from what we see in the US with a male to female ratio of 4-1. Smoking rates in Ghana are very low and these findings maybe attributable to other environmental or genetic factors.

While resources may be limited the majority of our patients were discharged from the hospital in what we would consider standard number of hospital days in the US. This is despite not obtaining daily labs, having shared living spaces and minimal access to ward nursing for assistance. This trip always reminds me of what is truly necessary and what is a luxury when managing complex urologic conditions.

We had a larger than normal team with us this year including 3 residents and 1 GU oncology fellow. The team came together so well to support each other. Dr. Yaw Nyame from University of Washington also joined us to help collaboration. Itwas great adding an additional experienced surgical faculty to the trip, but his family connection to the city made it all that much better. It was truly an honor to be the surgical lead on this trip.