Stakeholders meet on use of Non-Pneumatic Anti-Shock garment
Wednesday, Jul 26, 2014/The Tide, Nigeria
A stakeholders meeting on the use of Non-Pneumatic Anti-Shock Garment (NASG), a new device that controls bleeding in women, was held in Abuja.
The essence of the workshop put together by Centre for Population and Reproductive Health, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, was to popularise the device.
NASG is a split padded device, that is wrapped around a patient from the legs to the abdomen, in four different stages to assist in surgeries, or restore blood to deficient parts of the body during emergencies.
The Project Manager of NASG, Dr Titi Duro-Aina, told our correspondent that trial test for the device commenced in the country last year.
She said that the tests were being conducted at UCH, Aminu Kano University Teaching Hospital (AKUTH) and Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
Duro-Aina said that the device was strictly meant to control Acute Obstetric Haemorrhage in women for now.
She said that if in future the device would be modeled for men, other sensitisation programmes and workshops would be done for all stakeholders.
In her presentation, AKUTH Consultant Obstetrician-Gynaecologist, Dr Hadiza Galadanci, said that NASG was a first aid device that stabilises patients with obstetric haemorrhage.
She said that it reversed shock by returning blood to the vital organs such as the heart, brain and lungs thereby resulting to faster resuscitation, less blood loss and less need for transfusion.
With the use of NASG, she said that there would be fewer mortalities and morbidities, going by results of the device which was invented in the U.S.
On its therapeutic effects, Galadanci said that resuscitation of the central circulation results in translocation of up to three pints of blood from the lower body to the central location.
Because it reduced haemorrhage in pelvis, she said that NASG has the capacity to decrease in-blood flow to that part of the body, thereby providing additional time to provide definitive treatment.
For NASG to be effective, she said that any hospital where the device had to been used must have a “good laboratory backing†so that accurate results of tests would aid in its use.
On the challenges facing the new device, Prof. Oladosu Ojemgbede of UCH Department of Obstetric and Gynaecology said that the list included training of trainers on its use and the definition of the curriculum for that purpose.
He said that there was need to develop and formalise a referral protocol for patients in the NASG, just as facilities for other measures of managing obstetric haemorrhage should be available.
