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This story is from August 14, 2020

How elective surgeries are resuming in private hospitals

When the pandemic started in March, hospitals stopped all elective surgeries for the months of March, April and May. Patients who had elective procedures had no option but to wait, often in pain
How elective surgeries are resuming in private hospitals
NEW DELHI: When the pandemic started in March, hospitals stopped all elective surgeries for the months of March, April and May. Patients who had elective procedures had no option but to wait, often in pain. But since June, private hospitals have gradually started resuming elective procedures as Covid recovery rate increases and patient confidence is returning.

Twenty eight-year-old Rahul Ramachandran underwent a six-hour long surgery on August 2 for his thoracic aortic aneurysm at Wockhardt Hospital, Mumbai. A businessman from Vasai, Ramachandran’s aorta had developed a balloon-like structure on its wall leading to breathlessness, hoarseness and cough.
“I had been suffering from this since March but since everything was closed I couldn’t get immediate treatment for it. My condition worsened and in the last 15 days before the surgery I just couldn’t sleep because of breathlessness,” says Ramachandran who was finally operated at Wockhardt Hospital, Mira Road, and is now recovering. “We are coming back to normal. Mid-July onwards, surgical work is back to 70% of our capacity," says Dr Upendra Bhalerao, who operated on Ramachandran.
Kartik Bajoria, 40, from Jaipur had to tolerate painful of anal fissures through the lockdown because no hospital was carrying out elective procedures. This condition requires lateral sphincterotomy, a surgical procedure. But finally he mustered enough courage to be wheeled into the OT because he “was in too much discomfort to avoid surgery any further.”
“I am a cancer survivor and was very worried about contracting infection but the hospital staff took all precautions — repeatedly sanitising their hands, wearing masks, cleaning the room many times,” says Bajoria who got operated on June 30 at Rukmini Birla hospital, Jaipur.
After a prolonged lull the OTs in private hospitals across India are buzzing again with activity. Surgeons are flexing their fingers sniping, cutting, tearing, stitching parts of the body on the cold operating table.

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At Zen Multispecialty Hospital in Mumbai, 170 surgeries were done in the month of June and 237 in July. Before Covid, 400 procedures would happen in a day. “In April and May we only did 130 surgeries. In July we saw a big jump in elective surgeries. We have been talking to patients, running an awareness campaign on Facebook to tell them that it’s safe to come to hospitals, we are taking all precautions. And patients want to get operated in non-Covid hospitals,” says Dr Roy Patankar, gastroenterologist and director, Zen.
At Max Healthcare Patparganj, Delhi, elective surgeries fell to 10% of their pre-Covid number in April. But their numbers rose to 58% at the end of July and to 65% in the first week of August.
With no end in sight, patients are realising that the pandemic is here to stay and delaying their surgeries any longer may not be safe.
Fifty-three-year-old Renu Grover in Delhi was scared to come for a total knee replacement during the lockdown but when her pain got unbearable she agreed. “She had been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis for the past five years. During the lockdown she was in so much pain that her mobility was also affected. We operated upon her on June 24,” says Dr L Tomar, orthopaedic surgeon, Max Patparganj, Delhi.
“As people go out of the hospital after surgery, they get better and the word gets around…More patients will come back,” says Dr Saurabh Bhargava, urologist at Narayana Health City, Bengaluru.
To boost patient confidence hospitals are following the Covid protocol and also taking additional measures. For example, at Zen Multispeciality, the air filtration system in the OTs has been fitted with UV light to sterlize the air. Pre-covid the air filtration unit would exchange the air 12-15 times in an hour, now the number is up to 30 in an hour. A separate committee has been set up at Narayana to look into every patient who comes for surgery.
An anaesthetist and an infectious diseases specialist look into the patient’s case file to understand if the patient really needs the surgery, where is he from, is it a hotspot? Has he and his family been screened, is he showing any symptoms that can even remotely be connected to Covid?
Despite taking utmost precautions the risk of getting infected is always there. Fifty-two year-old Shobha Devi from Dumka in Jharkhand was to be operated for colon cancer in the first week of July at the Tata Medical Centre in Kolkata but because their staff tested positive at that time, all surgeries were cancelled including her’s.
“We lost the advance that we had paid plus now we had the added stress of finding a new doctor, a new hospital. We are not from the city so we asked the TMC doctor, where will we go?,” says Ganshyam Bhagat, husband of Shobha Devi. She was finally operated at Apollo Gleneagles by Dr Supriyo Ghatak and Dr Sumit Gulati.
“Because of the delay in surgeries a lot of cases have got complicated. For example, a simple case of gallstones when left untreated develops into pancreatitis which has a high mortality of 30-40%,” says Dr Ghatak, consultant surgeon, Apollo Gleneagles. “In Kolkata Covid cases haven’t plateaued yet and patients are still sceptical and apprehensive. But as their conditions are worsening they are anyway taking a chance and coming for surgeries,” he adds.
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