KHMH receives $100,000 donation in equipment
They have relied heavily on the generosity of friends to get state of the art medical equipment, and this week, the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital is once again the recipient of another important donation. According to Dr. Francis Smith, the new orthopaedic implants and instruments will help the KHMH put patients back on their feet.
Dr Francis Smith, Orthopaedic Surgeon, KHMH
?These are called inter-locking intra medullar nails and they are used to fix complex fractures of long bones.?
?It?s a long stainless steel rod that?s inserted inside the bone in the medullar canal, what you would know as the marrow. So it goes longitudinal, within the bone and there are screws that go across and lock it. That is why we call it an interlocking nail. Basically what this does, it fixes the fracture rigidly and it doesn?t allow for much interference with the fracture site which most often leads to infection.?
?At this time we are virtually doing everything, except total hip and total knee replacement, total shoulder replacement, ankle replacement, that kind of thing. But we are pretty good at trauma which is what mainly affects Belize.?
The instruments which were donated by a group called The Word at Work, is valued at more than one hundred thousand U.S. dollars. Dr. Smith says doctors will begin using the equipment on Friday.
