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Minimal Access Surgery in Children focus of 3rd William Dennis Memorial Lecture

The Third Annual William Dennis Memorial Lecture will be held on June 8, 2004 at 6:00 p.m. in the Main Lecture Theatre, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital of the West Indies. The Lecture on “Minimal Access Surgery in Children” will be delivered by Dr. Jacob Langer, Chief of Paediatric Surgery, Toronto Sick Children’s Hospital, Canada. Prof. Langer is also the Department of Surgery’s 2004 External Examiner for the DM (Paediatric Surgery) exams.

Minimal Access Surgery refers to surgery performed using small incisions through which work instruments and a camera are passed, giving the surgeon access and a view of the operating field. Examples of minimal access surgical procedures are laparoscopic cholecystectomy and laparoscopic tubal ligation. The development of this branch of surgery has led to other procedures e.g. laparoscopic (appendectomy) and even laparoscopic hernia repair. Laparoscoic procedures in children are very infrequently undertaken in Jamaica and Prof. Jacob Langer’s lecture is particularly timely as the health sector improves surgical care in children.

This year’s William Dennis Lecture will have other short presentations. These are The Treatment of Congenital Anomalies Diagnosed in Utero and Acute Intussusception at the Bustamante Hospital for Children

The use of ultrasound to diagnose congenital anomalies in babies before they are born facilitates planning of deliveries and early corrective treatment of newborns.

Acute intussusception is the commonest life threatening surgical emergency between 3 months and 15 months of life. It sometimes causes death because it can be confused with acute gastroenteritis, this can lead to a delay in effective surgical treatment until it is too late to save the patient.

The Minister of Health and the Canadian High Commissioner are expected to attend the lecture and an item of entertainment featuring JDT singers is also scheduled. JDT singers are 5 males aged 10 to 13 who won the JCDC children’s gospel concert in 2003 and came second in 2004.

William Winston Dennis William Winston Dennis was born on the 26th of January 1941 and died in August 1999. He was raised in Beersheba, New Market, St Elizabeth, and attended Cornwall College. He studied medicine at McGill University, Canada until 1968 and completed his internship in Jamaica's public hospitals.

After internship he was awarded a Commonwealth scholarship to study surgery in the United Kingdom, where he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1973. On return to Jamaica in 1975, he was appointed Consultant Paediatric Surgeon at the Bustamante Hospital for Children (BHC), a post he held for almost 25 years. Under his leadership the paediatric surgical unit of the BHC became a busy and efficient service, willing to take on the most difficult clinical challenges in newborn surgery.


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