An Interplast team from the UK recently conducted a free medical mission to northern Sri Lanka, an area of conflict where access to specialised surgery has not been available for many years
The Interplast team worked in the government hospital in Vavunia for three weeks and performed surgery mainly on children with cleft lips and palates, and adults with burns scars.
Medical equipment and laboratory facilities available for the team were very limited.
A HemoCue 201+ haemoglobin analyser was donated from HemoCue UK which proved to be an extremely useful piece of equipment.
"The HemoCue proved ideal for use in such an environment", said Dr P Jeyaratnam, the anaesthetist on the team, "It is small, robust and extremely accurate.
"The nurses from Interplast found it easy to teach the local nurses to use it".
Pre-operative haemoglobin (Hb) measurement was carried out on all 100 patients and peri-operative Hb measurement was carried out whenever there was concern about blood loss.
The rapid and accurate results provided by the Hb201+ allowed valued resources to be preserved by avoiding unnecessary blood transfusion.
The HemoCue test requires only ten microlitres of blood, and disposable microcuvettes contain all of the reagents in a dried form eliminating the need for refrigeration.
The sample is automatically drawn into the cuvette by capillary action and spontaneously mixes with the reagents.
The cuvette is simply inserted into the portable HemoCue photometer and results are clearly displayed in less than one minute, allowing clinical decisions to be made on-the-spot.
