SUTUREGARD® Medical CEO Dan Ladizinsky participated in an exciting call that begins the official collaboration between Operation Smile and SUTUREGARD® Medical Inc. Operation Smile is the most prestigious and well established charitable global plastic surgery organization worldwide, dedicated to improving surgical care of underprivileged peoples, with an emphasis on cleft lip and palate repair.
Operation Smile works directly with local surgeons to improve care in other areas of surgery. After a delightful and interesting meeting at the American Society of Plastic Surgery Annual Meeting with Global Director of Education, Dr Maimunat Alex-Adeomi, a connection was made with Dr Faustin Ntirenganya, an academic plastic surgeon from Kigali, Rwanda.
Dr Faustin is a well published surgeon involved in education of surgical resident trainees, and he immediately saw many possible uses for SUTUREGARD® ISR, both in direct wound closure application, as well as a tool for improving outcomes in difficult scar/keloid revision surgeries. Our device can allow surgeons to close some difficult wounds in the office setting under local anesthetic, which saves resources and does not expose the patient to general anesthetic risks.
SUTUREGARD® ISR allows the surgeon to quickly and safely stretch the skin, and in doing so, this not only can allow more wounds to be closed primarily, but also can provide a lower tension environment, which is key to successful healing with the least amount of scarring. African skin types are prone to this difficult form of pathologic scarring, either with abnormally thick and raised hypertrophic (within the scar boundaries) or keloidal (beyond the original scar boundaries into normal skin) type scarring. It is our hope that this call today was the first step of a journey together that can help improve surgical outcomes in Rwanda.