Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH) is a busy acute public hospital with close to 3,000 emergency general surgery and trauma admissions every year. KTPH has offered a dedicated acute surgical unit known as the Emergency Surgery and Trauma (ESAT) since 2014.

Emergency and trauma surgery is usually urgent in nature and performed on very sick patients. Compared with the conventional system, where all emergency surgeries are attended to by the surgeon on call in addition to his or her daily elective workload, ESAT has a dedicated team. This effectively allocates resources to provide prompt and timely care for patients. In 2018 and 2019, the ESAT team was featured at the NHG Team Recognition Awards (Bronze and Gold) respectively for its commitment to improving the emergency surgery and trauma care.

We provide:

Emergency Surgery And Trauma
Services performed:

Consultant led team dedicated to emergency surgical and trauma patients
Rapid assessment of critically ill surgical patients in emergency department
Timely surgery for emergency surgical and trauma patients
Established collaboration with Intensive Care Unit and Interventional Radiology
Acute and elective endoscopy
Postoperative recovery and follow up clinics

Conditions treated:

Acute abdominal pain
Acute appendicitis
Biliary colic/acute cholecystitis/cholangitis/pancreatitis
Upper and lower gastrointestinal tract bleeding
Gastroenteritis/Colitis
Intra-abdominal infections
Soft tissue infections
Bowel obstruction - benign and malignant
Multi-system trauma-related injuries
Penetrating traumatic injury

Emergency Laparotomy (Abdominal Operation)
Integrated Emergency Laparotomy Multidisciplinary Team
Emergency major abdominal (laparotomy) surgery are commonly performed for patients with acute abdominal conditions. This surgery is potentially life-threatening procedure and patients that undergo these surgery have higher mortality of up to five times greater than high-risk elective surgery (gastrointestinal cancer surgery).

As a patient, when you are in the position of needing this kind of high-risk emergency surgery, you depend on multidisciplinary teams to work closely and effectively together to ensure that you are cared in the best possible manner. Therefore, the ESAT service has started a collaboration between the Emergency Department, General Surgery, Geriatric Medicine, Anaesthesia, nurses and allied health professional to implement a transdisciplinary care team.

This integrated team provides a hassle-free care for patients presenting with acute abdominal conditions requiring emergency major abdominal (laparotomy) surgery. More than 50% of patients are elderly with age above 65 years old and they recover better with early involvement by geriatric physician (specialist in elderly). The support and seamless care kickstarts when the patient enters the emergency department, and continues all the way to when they are discharge to the community hospital or to home.

Services performed:

Major abdominal surgery
Geriatric assessment and management for patients above 65 years old
Intensive care for critically ill patients
Comprehensive physiotherapy and rehabilitation