DOCTOR HOUSE

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The lung on the left is smaller than the one on the right.

Lungs are the only organs that can drift on water.

About one litre of air always reside in the lungs.

Unique cells in the lungs generate mucus which catches dust, dirt and bacteria. This is the initial line of resistance agains bacteria going into the body through air.

The nine-year-old girl whose spine suffered deformities in the wake of childhood tuberculosis is set for corrective surgery as early as this month, her doctors have said.

Nigerians doctors, nurses and therapists working outside the country have volunteered their time and expertise for the next step of surgery.

And Nigerian-Turkish Nizamiye Hospital volunteered its facilities for surgery, nursing care and accommodation that Ummi Salma will require for seven days, according to a document seen by Daily Trust.

The surgery comes as UATH itself starts internal clamp down on spine surgeries in its theatres.

The surgery is only one step of a series of procedures to treat Ummi Salma Abdullahi, still hospitalised at University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada, where she’s already been fitted with a halo-traction device.

In the first photos since her treatment started at UATH, Ummi Salma is seen smiling with her parents and shaking hands with her doctors.

The halo-traction device comes with pins to her skull and will be piled with weights gradually reaching 10 to 30% of her body weight.

The weights will be piled at the foot of her hospital bed and connected to her via a pulley over her bed.

It will serve to help straighten her spine, in which six discs were compressed around her spinal cord in the wake of TB she suffered as a child.

The crushed bones will be removed and replaced with new tissue and held in place using pedicle screws, according to Dr Taiwo Malomo, one of Ummi Salma’s physicians.

The damage resulted in “complex deformity of the spine, paralysis of her leg, failure of her lungs to expand, and inability to control her urine and faeces,” said her physician, Dr Kawu Ahidjo, consultant spine surgeon at UATH.

Her doctors believe once the deformity is repaired to free her spinal cord from further damage, functions could gradually return to her limbs, along with ability to pass urine and faeces.

The deformity has left Ummi Salma with the face of a nine-yearold and the body of a one-year-old.