Who's who and Aria's project

Dr. Aria Jafari, pictured

We have a great team on this trip, including
ENT'S
Susan Cordes
Bruce Campbell
Kia Jones
ENT Resident
Aria Jafari
Nurses
Vickie Firkins
Kathi Campbell
Diana Sullivan
Medical student
David Campbell
Flunky and blogger
Kyle Cordes

All are veteran participants with the exception of first year participant David Campbell, a fourth year medical student.

Aria is a resident from the University of California at San Diego. He is working on a research project that he began last year. I will try to explain what he is doing, as I understand it, so my explanation will be a non-medical layperson version...

One of the most common surgeries performed by our team over the years has been thyroidectomy. Most are for patients with a goiter that is big enough to cause health symptoms, typically trouble breathing. (Many want their large goiter removed for cosmetic reasons, but they will need to claim symptoms in order to have the surgery.) Goiters are caused by a lack of iodine in the diet. (In the US we have iodized salt.) One interesting fact is that most goiter patients here are women although men also have the same iodine shortage in their diet.

In the US, if a patient has a thyroidectomy, the entire gland is removed. The patient will then take medicine for life to replace the missing thyroid hormones. In Kenya, a thyroidectomy patient doesn't have access to such medicines because of the costs. Therefore, when the team removes a thyroid here, instead of removing the entire gland, they will leave a small portion of it behind. The idea is that the remaining part of the gland will still produce the necessary thyroid hormones but not grow into another goiter.

Aria's project is to collect and publish data on the subject. Very little data is currently available. Is doing it this way truly effective in this part of the world, under these circumstances?

Aria, with help from the ENT clinic nurses, has tracked down and contacted forty-some of the fifty-some thyroidectomy patients from previous trips. He is having them come to the ENT clinic for a follow-up exam and is having them get a blood test to check their thyroid hormone levels. Susan has helped him get approvals for the study and funding for the blood tests. Also, each patient is being given 1,000 Kenyan shillings (about $10) to pay their travel expenses from their village to Eldoret.