Elective Operations At AIIMS To Resume Soon

NEW DELHI: All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is planning to resume non-emergency surgeries in about a week. Dr Randeep Guleria, director of the institute, told TOI that whilecorona management was important, the needs of non-Covid-19 patients couldn’t be ignored.

“For example, a patient who requires a knee replacement cannot be asked to wait for long. Lack of surgery may affect his or her quality of life. Similarly, a patient suffering from advanced malignancy needs to be operated soon to check disease progression and reduce the suffering,” Dr Guleria said.

AIIMS conducts more than 500 surgeries daily, of which 85% are non-emergency procedures. On March 20, the hospital had announced its decision to postpone elective and non-essential surgery procedure by a month so that the doctors, nurses and other medical staff are not overburdened amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Many patients who were lined up for surgeries, in some cases after several month’s wait, were asked to come once the situation improves.

“The resumption of surgeries will have to be in a graded manner. Priority will be given to patients who cannot wait at all, and depending on how things progress, a decision will be taken at a later stage on whether to resume services at full scale,” one of the hospital doctors said.

On Monday, the institute started tele-medicine consultation through which many registered patients were attended to by hospital doctors.

“The biggest challenge is availability of PPEs and control over allowing people inside the hospital. If we allow everyone, the risk of spread of infection from asymptomatic persons may increase despite all screening mechanisms,” said an official at one of the top private hospitals.

Delhi State Cancer Institute is also starting OPD services beginning Tuesday. “We plan to start admitting patients from March 27,” Dr B L Sherwal, the hospital director, said. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital is already running OPD for non-Covid-19 patients in limited capacity.-Times Of India