With the aim of reducing the waiting lists for surgical interventions required by children throughout Chile, in the middle of this year, both organizations joined forces to carry out operations of 48 to 72 hours in which they have intervened up to 15 patients per day in regional health centers, being able to solve the medical needs of 154 children in different cities during the year 2023.
JANUARY, 2024 - It is said that "unity is strength" and the agreement signed between Corporación Renal Infantil MATER and the Chilean Society of Pediatric Surgery (SCHCP) in the middle of this year, has corroborated this once again. Under a collaboration and joint work agreement, both institutions develop projects for hospital units and services that require support in the resolution of waiting lists, seeking to help children across the country who require surgical treatment to improve their quality of life.
Initially, the surgeries have focused on simple pathologies of an ambulatory nature, such as phimosis, inguinal hernias and cryptorchidism. "It should be noted that, being simple pathologies from the medical point of view, this type of patient can be 2 to 3 years on the waiting list, since they have no chance of achieving adequate treatment due to lack of medical and human resources. In this context, what we are doing implies a radical change for these children and their families", comments Dr. Marco Valenzuela, vice-president of the Chilean Society of Pediatric Surgery and specialist in charge of executing the agreement with MATER.
How do they work? For two to three days, the medical teams operate without rest in days that can easily extend from 08:00 to 18:00 hours, a period in which they can intervene between ten and fifteen patients a day. This figure obviously has a radical impact on the waiting lists. It is important to emphasize that the work does not end in the ward or when the patient is discharged; they take care to leave the patient's follow-up fully coordinated with the local medical teams, replicating the same care that a regional hospital would provide.
"All the operations have been performed by volunteer specialists from the Urology branch of the SCHCP and support staff of the Corporation, including recently our kinesiology team. We have also been accompanied by volunteer pediatric anesthesiologists", details Dr. José Manuel Escala, pediatric urologist and founder of Corporación Renal Infantil MATER.
The objective is to carry out at least three operations within the framework of this agreement per semester and taking into account the reception that has been received by the health services, many of which do not have specialists in the area, the motivation of the local health teams and of the families to definitively resolve the diagnosis of their children and the willingness of the physicians to participate in this pro bono initiative, it will surely be a reality sooner rather than later.
In fact, the plans in the short term are to expand the operations to other areas of pediatric surgery such as plastic, thoracic and neonatal surgery and those that require hospitalization of several days or weeks, the idea is to replicate the excellent results they have had so far with outpatient procedures.
The reduction of waiting lists has not been the only positive result of the initiative. The collaborative and concentrated work has made it possible to optimize the management and productivity of the medical services involved, to enhance academic and training work by including scholarship holders in the teams and to generate a waiting list of doctors interested in participating in the experience involved in this surgical marathon. All of this is of direct benefit to children throughout the country.
A new challenge
The expertise of the MATER Children's Renal Corporation has been fundamental to achieve this challenge, since they have been coordinating collaborative operations throughout Chile for years, which have allowed them to provide surgical treatment to more than 700 children in more than 50 operations from Arica to Coyhaique.
A titanic task if we consider that at the present time some 20,000 Chileans are dialyzed, which for Dr. Escala, "is an enormous figure, many of these adults started out as children with the disease. That is why early diagnosis of pathologies such as a febrile urinary tract infection, which in children under 4 years of age may be due to a malformation, is fundamental". These, when detected in time, can be operated on and prevent the children from suffering from chronic kidney disease.
And this is precisely where the MATER Children's Renal Corporation plays an essential role, as the non-profit organization has been dedicated to preventing kidney and urological damage in low-income children and adolescents for two decades. It is the only institution in the country specialized in children's prevention and works to facilitate access to examinations, surgeries and social assistance to prevent children from having to undergo dialysis or transplants due to lack of resources.
The work they carry out is invaluable, since all the preventive actions they focus on to prevent chronic kidney disease, thus performing more than 14,000 treatments per year in its Diagnostic Center and 350 surgeries both in Santiago and in the regions. In its Shelter House located in the commune of San Miguel, they receive pediatric patients from regions who must travel to the capital for health reasons, but do not have the resources to pay for their lodging; providing 2,500 stays for children and their families every year.
Today they are preparing to reduce and even eliminate waiting lists by 2024. Thanks to this type of agreement and its regional surgical operations "we have opened a window to put an end to the non-boom patients who are on the waiting lists, who have no priority and are falling behind, since many of them present later renal or urological problems when they are not treated in time," concludes Dr. Escala.
