United States-based Linden-born Dr Stephen Carryl, who is Chairman and Programme Director, Department of Surgery at the Brooklyn Hospital Centre, and a unit from the Overseas Medical Assistance Team (OMAT), have successfully completed some 20 major surgeries at the Linden Hospital Complex and other clinics around the bauxite town, as they wrapped up their 19th visit to Linden on Thursday night. The visit by members of the OMAT team comprised lead general surgeon Dr Carryll, another surgeon Dr Malcolm Goodchild, family practitioner Dr Keith Cummings, psychiatrist Malaika Berkely and anaesthetists Ms Yuri Powell, Deon Johnson and Dianne Sampson, among others.
The visit was realized in collaboration with the Linden Fund USA, whose Secretary Ms Linda Felix-Johnson was also here.
Speaking with this newspaper Dr. Carryl related, “This year, OMAT was able to partner with the Linden Fund and do more work than we had done in the past, in the sense that the team had two components.”
One of the two groups led by Dr. Carryll was based at the Linden Hospital Complex where surgeries were done, while the other conducted clinics at the Linden Enterprise Network (LEN) and had sessions on women matters.
Dr Carryll stated: “We did a surgery clinic on Monday, the first day we came, and we saw 60 patients. From these sixty patients we were able to schedule 16 operations. We had surgeries on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and we did a total of 20 major surgeries.
Looking at the specific surgeries that were conducted, Dr Carryll remarked “They ranged  from thyroid surgery, gallbladder surgery, and breast cancer surgery requiring mastectomy, to hernia surgery, hydrocele surgery, and several hysterectomies, and those 20 are majors.”
He added that there were other minor surgeries and all the surgeries were successful.
The lead surgeon also stated, “For us who do surgery, we weren’t stuck with only one area; we were able to see gall bladder cases and hernias and breast, a good cross section even though I know in Linden there are a lot of women who have fibroids but that’s common. “And I think the trouble with that is that they don’t have a way getting it done consistently. So they are sort of always like left back because it is not an emergency, it is not life threatening; and the trouble is that they bleed heavily from the fibroids and that produces anemia so you have a Catch 22.”
He added, “The surgeries sometimes could be dangerous for persons if their blood count is too low. But if you get the uterus removed that would  be the thing  to stop it, so our system down here doesn’t have a lot of excess capacity to just give blood to people to build them back up. They have to rely on medicine. So I saw several women who I know would benefit from this hysterectomy, but I really couldn’t do any thing because of their anemia.”
While the action seemed to be centred at the Linden Hospital Complex, Dr Carryll said that one of the highlights of this trip is that this year they were able to conduct a Health Fair at the Linden Enterprise Network (LEN) building.
This was an achievement for his team, Dr Carryll related, as in the past they would come and pretty much be limited to the hospital, stuck in the Operating Room all day. But this year they were able to coordinate to do a health fair where they did some testing for things like blood sugar and blood pressure. They were also able to do cholesterol testing and found out that a lot of people probably have trouble with cholesterol.