A bunch of surgeons at the MY Hospital in Indore hit the news recently for the right reason when they spent money from their own pockets to facilitate a surgery aside from performing the surgery itself. The complex surgery which took more than 8 hours was to remove the oesophagus and to reconstruct it using a large piece of intestine.

It’s said that the mortality rates in such surgeries is almost 50 percent.

The 23 year old Abhishek met with a serious problem when he accidentally ingested acid. The acid damaged his oesophagus quite badly. Since it was blocked completely, the patient was practically unable to ingest anything for the past six months.

In regular cases the patient loses more than a liter of blood during the surgery. However, using surgical staplers- for the buying of which the doctors contributed, the blood loss was limited to just 200 ml. In this case, the hospital couldn’t allocate budget for staplers. It wasn’t possible for Abhishek to foot the bill either.

In fact, the surgeons were asked to refer the patient to hospitals in Mumbai or Delhi where the surgery can be done.

That’s when the doctors decided to share the cost of surgical staplers.

The surgery which was performed around 10 days back was a success and Abhishek could now ingest liquid food. The doctors used a cut off portion of large intestine to reconstruct the part of the alimentary canal where the patient’s oesophagus was situated. They performed the surgery using a laparoscope.

The irony is that patients from BPL families could get financial assistance for up to Rs 30,000 under the Deen Dayal Antyodya Upchar Yojana. However, the MY hospital didn’t have enough funds.

However, thanks to the surgeons’ intervention, the patient is now well and happy.

Image credits: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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