Today afternoon, four patients with heart diseases underwent cardiac catheterization in the newly built Cath lab in our hospital. The new angiography suite is equipped with sophisticated technology that produces high resolution images with the lowest dose of radiation possible.
This year, the hospital added a ten-bed intensive coronary care unit (ICCU) on the first floor of the Medicine Complex. The hospital has also acquired and installed a Cath lab in the unit. The unit and the lab were fully funded by a Mumbai based philanthropist octogenarian couple in memory of their daughter and son-in-law who died in the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack. The couple wished not to be acknowledged for their contribution.
Over the last three decades, the number of patients with coronary artery disease has gone up significantly. Even our hospital admits close to 2000 patients every year, with blocked coronaries, choke valves and failed hearts. We also care for a large number of outpatients with diabetes and high blood pressure, the disorders that up the risk of coronary artery disease.
Many of these patients need cardiac catheterization, a test to detect extent and severity of blockage in the arteries that feed the heart. These blockages, if timely detected, and rationally managed, can reduce complications, ward off future heart attacks and cut premature deaths. The test, and subsequent treatment, is expensive, though. Although every district in Vidarbha now has a Cath lab, and very poor patients can now get free treatment by government funded schemes, a sizable stratum in the society still cannot access angioplasties because they cannot afford the costs.
We hope that our patients needing angiography will benefit from this initiative. We also hope to reduce the frequency of unnecessary angioplasties and maintain evidence based diagnostics and interventions in the unit.
To begin with, cardiologists from Care Hospital, Nagpur shall perform angiograms twice a week- most of them as a day-care procedure. Incidentally, we are being supported in this endeavour by Dr Varun Bhargava, Director, Care Hospital, Nagpur- a 1969 batch MGIMS alumnus!
