Whipps Cross gynae team win first prize at annual scientific meeting
Nurse, Zway Magama discusses how she and the team scooped the first prize for the best e-poster at this year’s British Society of Gynaecological Endoscopy (BSGE) meeting.
First prize
We were honoured to receive the gold prize at the BSGE 2021 annual scientific meeting and hope that this new pathway will allow for better pre-surgery planning for patients with severe anaemia and thus reducing the risks associated with particular gynaecological procedures that can cause haemorrhaging and result in the patient requiring a blood transfusion.
Details of this new pathway and what it means for patient care
Trying to predict the exact timing of a patient’s operation is always challenging in the NHS, but for people who suffer from menorrhagia – a condition characterised by heavy menstrual cycles (periods), and require key hole surgery to remove fibroids from the womb (myomectomy), this can be particularly difficult. Unfortunately for these types of patients it can mean waiting many months to have this procedure, which for some patients means delaying starting a family. People with menorrhagia are often anaemic and this surgical procedure carries a significant risk of the patient bleeding out (haemorrhaging) so trying to optimise people’s haemoglobin at just the right time before undergoing this procedure, and between their next menstrual cycle where the levels of haemoglobin will fall again, can be challenging.
As part of Dr Jimi Odejinmi’s (Divisional Director of Womens and Children) team we worked together with the anaesthetists to design and implement an ‘anaemia pathway’ at Whipps Cross Hospital, which aimed to identify those people with particularly low haemoglobin levels (anaemia). These people then received either IV iron transfusion, oral iron or in some instances a blood transfusion depending on their clinical status. We found that by using this pathway before surgery, haemoglobin levels were higher and those people with the most severe anaemia were better identified in a timely fashion. Also, we found fewer people required blood transfusions during surgery and additionally this pathway did not increase waiting times for people to receive their surgery.
This work further highlights our vision and the need for ‘Fibroid Centres’; highly specialist units with a multidisciplinary team approach lead by gynaecologists with expertise in minimal access surgery, offering all modalities of treatment for people with fibroids enabling individualised care.