Spotlight on Dr. Aderinsola Aderonmu

This past July, Dr. Aderinsola Aderonmu, a 3^rd year surgical resident at Stanford, was selected to accompany Dr. Gregg Adams, a general surgeon at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, to Guatemala for a week. During her time there, they were able to provide more than 50 free operations to people in need. Here is her story:

“There’s a social club in San Francisco called The Family. Some of its passionate members have been organizing self-funded surgery mission trips to Guatemala’s remote areas for more than 20 years to provide clusters of free surgeries to the underserved. They organize a trip every two to three months, and every time there are different specialties, including ophthalmology, Ob/Gyn, Pediatric surgery, etc. This time it was General and Plastic Surgery.

My attending, Dr. Gregg Adams, became a member of this social club a few years ago and was fascinated by this noble cause. He met with surgeons from all over the Bay Area who had made the trip and listened to their feedback. He was astonished by the circumstances patients come from and wanted to help reduce hardship related to the limited resources available to communities in the remote areas of Guatemala. Dr. Adams decided to organize an annual trip and take one resident with him every time to perform surgeries in that part of Guatemala. He’s been doing this for four consecutive years, and he personally covers the travel costs. Also, all surgeries performed by the visiting team are provided free of charge to patients.

We arrived in Guatemala City on Friday, July 11^th. First thing on Saturday morning, we were on a bus to Nuevo Progresso, a border city on the west coast of Guatemala. It was an eight-and-a-half-hour drive, but the minute we arrived, we immediately started seeing patients, who we would operate on the next day. On Sunday, we operated on 10 patients.

When I was there, another plastic surgery attending, Dr. Bill McClure, who graduated from Stanford’s Plastic Surgery Program, was also present.  This was his 99^th international trip, and it is his lifetime passion. The surgical mission included two general surgery attendings, two general surgery residents, a plastic surgeon (Dr. Bill McClure), and a plastic surgery resident (Dr. Max Silverstein), all collaborating to perform surgeries and provide care.

Every dawn, we were woken up by the roosters – what a lovely way to start our day! We began working at 7 a.m. by seeing the patients that we operated on the day before. After that, we evaluated new patients at the clinic and listed them for surgery, then went to their humble OR to do back-to-back surgeries until 6 or 7 p.m.

We did a variety of cases, such as inguinal hernia repairs, umbilical hernia repairs, incisional and ventral hernia repairs, as well as all sorts of lumps and bumps, cysts, lipomas, and even laparoscopic cholecystectomies. Combined, the two surgical groups completed 50-60 operations that week.

The challenge with lap choles was that they only had one laparoscopy set, and it was old, from the 1980s. To reuse the instruments for different patients, they had to be cleaned and sterilized. Volunteers, whom we jokingly referred to as 'dishwashers,' were responsible for cleaning and sterilizing surgical instruments using an autoclave, similar to processes in the U.S. The sterilization was manually done, so it was a tedious process that limited the number of possible laparoscopic procedures we could do. Another challenge was that they had a single CO2 insufflation machine. With all these equipment limitations, and the fact that most of them were outdated, we could only do one procedure at a time. Regardless, all the work we planned was done.

Patients often traveled long distances, sometimes over several days and multiple bus rides, to reach the hospital, as most resources are concentrated in major cities like Guatemala City and Antigua. The nearest national hospital was in Coatepeque and has waitlists for surgery that can extend for years, making timely care inaccessible for many patients. It also depends on who you know. But it was the nearest hospital that had CT scanners and other diagnostic/ surgical equipment, so patients with urgent surgical needs have no other choice.

Moreover, procedures at national hospitals are not free. Patients unable to afford accommodation are allowed to stay in the hospital ward for one night before surgery, and local families in Nueva Progresso sometimes host patients' relatives to reduce costs.

There is one surgeon, Dr. Emilia, who works at Coatepeque National Hospital and comes to Nuevo Progresso once a month to do as many cases as possible during her visits. She and her residents would sometimes do 100 cases in one week.

On July 19^th, we said our goodbyes and took a seven-hour bus ride to Antigua, a resort city, where we had a team dinner to celebrate our successful mission.  We spent a day and a half there before traveling back to the U.S. on July 20^th.

My heart was touched by the kindness, warmth, and generosity of Guatemalans. Throughout the week, the hospital staff took turns preparing home-cooked meals for our group. We enjoyed three delicious local meals every day, and that took away all the stress of work.

I will never forget when I finished work after a long day to see a lady who I had operated on a few days before waiting for me with a hand-crafted bag she brought for me as a gift. She said that she was living in pain for several years, and now she feels better. She waited all afternoon to thank me, pray for me, and asked me to accept her gift to remind me of the time I spent in her hometown. She said that they realize how far we have come to help them, and they deeply appreciate what we do. We don’t often see such emotional gestures like that here.

It was a unique experience, and I feel empowered by the opportunity to perform such a high volume of surgeries under supervision, which renewed my sense of purpose in medicine. The trust and appreciation of patients and their families is priceless, and I honestly encourage other residents to seek similar experiences.

Dr. Adams and Aderonmu are exploring ongoing and potential collaborations with local and international physicians, the development of training programs, and opportunities for funding and expansion of the mission. The mission is primarily funded out-of-pocket by participants, with some residents, such as Dr. Aderonmu, sponsored by Dr. Adams; there is no formal nonprofit or external funding source currently supporting the trips.