The Issa Family, founders of the international company EG Group, have donated funds to East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust’s official charity, ELHT&Me, to purchase Fibreoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing (FEES) equipment.
Mr Issa, father of the company’s CEOs Mohsin and Zuber Issa, chose to make the donation to the Speech and Language Therapy department. The donation is another example of EG Group’s support for the hospital’s charity.
Fibreoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing (FEES) is the use of a Fibreoptic Nasendoscopy, a very thin camera, which is inserted through the nose into the throat to look at the voice box from above. FEES can be used to assess a patient’s swallow, their voice, and the structures of the throat, secretions and sensation. It can help to make decisions on whether a patient is safe to eat and drink, to facilitate voice assessment and accurate care planning.
The Trust has three therapists fully trained in FEES, and has been introducing the technique into different areas of the hospital, including for patients with head and neck cancer, on the Acute Stroke and Critical Care Units, and more recently, both general inpatients and outpatients. The new equipment will provide crystal clear, videoscope images with added features to assess and analyse voice in more detail, and will enable staff to produce reports instantly, giving them increased capacity to see more patients and develop the FEES service further.
Alison McLaughlin, Clinical Lead for Speech and Language Therapy, said: “We are delighted to accept this piece of equipment, and so grateful to the Issa family for their generous donation.
“This FEES equipment will have a huge impact on the speed and quality of the work we do across multiple departments, and the family have also kindly agreed to fund the maintenance of the machine over the next few years, which is amazing!
“We hope that the equipment will improve patient care and experience for people, for many years to come.”
Mr Issa stated that he is delighted to see the machine being used and benefiting so many patients across East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust.
