Oman - Spinal word

If you don’t mind travelling a little over two hours to get operated upon, a speciality institute in Cyprus may just end your back problems, finds Sandhya Menon

You may be able to live with a bad arm, just maybe. Bad eyes, sure. Even a bad leg. But if you’ve got a bad back, the kind of nosedive your quality of life takes is, in a word, depressing!

From sitting in a place for too long to restricting yourself to minimal fun if your body is involved, a bad back does all this and more. Reportedly, the second most common condition that Americans get treated for has to do with problems with the back.

Beginning of last week, a team from AIMIS (American Institute of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery) in Cyprus was here in Oman to offer to doctors in Oman a chance to learn from and share their expertise. “With every passing year, the aim of research is to make surgery smaller, less invasive and safer.

The surgeries that we do at AIMIS fit that bill – they are safe, the loss of blood is minimal and, most importantly, the recovery process is so quick that many times the patients can go home in 24 hours,” says Dr William Hunter, who is part of the team of AIMIS’s founding surgeons.

Apart from state of the art technology that the doctors have used in the US, AIMIS also has a committed policy of creating an environment that will act as a home away from home for patients who come in from other countries.

More than encouraging the Ministry of Health in Oman to send patients to Cyprus and AIMIS for complex spinal surgeries, the team’s aim was to offer a chance to doctors to travel with their patients, understand the entire procedure and be a part of the process so that post-operative treatment, on their return, becomes easier.

At a time when the Ministry of Health is aggressively pushing its residents to avail of treatment available in the country, does this sort of medical tourism stand a chance, we wonder. “I think it’s a great presentation and the XILF surgery – which goes in from the side and replaces a disc and screws the bones back on -- is no doubt minimally invasive and has many benefits.

But I am yet to be convinced if the stability of doing that without putting a plate in – which ensures that the bone won’t move with wear and tear although it will make three or more fused bones move as a block, as we do now – is a wise thing. Once I am convinced of that, I would encourage any patient who needs to be treated outside Oman to go ahead,” says Dr Ahmed Al Qamshui, head of medical sciences at the Royal Armed Forces Hospital, who was present at the symposium for a select few doctors.

Dr Ahmed Al Jahwari, consultant, orthopaedics and spine, at the same hospital has fewer doubts because he visited the hospital in Cyprus and has only complimentary things to say about it. “I look forward to giving the doctors who are consultants there a chance to come to Oman and work with us. The symposium was extremely informative and we are glad to have partnerships with hospitals that some of the better surgeons from the US,” he says. All founding surgeons, nearly 21, are from the US and come down to AIMIS in Cyprus to conduct their surgeries.

The symposium was held under the patronage of the Embassy of Cyprus, whose very approachable ambassador says, “Not only are the very best doctors available in Cyprus but it’s also a beautiful country with many cultural similarities to Oman.”

Oman Time

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