We were asked by a surgeon at Kossamack if we would call a physician who ran a clinic and surgical center in Phnom Penh. He said that this physician had quite a few patients with wounds as well as a recent victim of an acid attack who was badly wounded.
We said that we would assist this physician any way we could and we arranged to meet him at his clinic in the early afternoon. he took us by SUV to the CRC Surgical center which was on the out skirts of Phnom Penh. We walked into a building which had a reception area that was filled with Surgeons and nurses. We were ushered down a thin hallway were several patients sat lined up against the wall. When we rounded the corner we were shocked to see a large room packed wall to wall with patients lying on beds - there were at least 70 people. The room had a strong odour of unwashed people in a temperature of about 90 degrees (no air conditioning)
We were introduced to the Nursing Director and the nursing staff who were instructed to initiate a wound clinic at the end of the recovery room. The scene was as follows- patients were coming back from the Operating Room to be recovered from anaesthesia and right beside them a wound clinic was going on because there was no other space to hold it.
We saw 11 wounded patients in the next 3 hours with some atypical wounds. There were two patients who had tuberculosis in their spinal cords who had post op spinal incisions due to recent surgery. There was a 17 year old boy who was bitten by a poisonous snake and went into a coma. He ended up with a stage 3 pressure ulcer on his sacrum secondary to the snake bite and lying in one place. We saw a young boy with a third degree burn to his foot- several weeks post skin graft. We saw a post op head incision from a brain aneurysm repair.
And then we met the woman who was a victim of an acid attack. (see separate entry on acid attacks)
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