To provide relief to the poor from across the region who are not able to afford costly heart surgeries for their children, the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery (CVTS) at the Super Specialty Hospital, Government Medical College (GMC), Jammu, has come as a saviour.
The hospital has been performing open-heart surgeries on children born with heart defects like hole in the chambers of the heart and other associated complicated anomalies under Ayushman Bharat Scheme wherein they do not have to pay anything out of their pocket.
A spokesperson of the GMC said, “The spectrum of diseases operated include abnormal connection between large arteries arising from the heart, narrowing of the large artery arising from the heart, hole between the upper chambers of the heart, hole between the lower chambers of the heart (Ventricular Septal Defect VSD) and complicated heart defects. The age of the patients range from 1 year to 18 years”.
Many patients are brought late because the parents are not able to afford surgeries for their children because of financial constraints. “But now, with advent of Ayushman Bharat Scheme, parents are bringing their kids for early surgeries. These kids need meticulous preoperative evaluation as they can have other genetic anomalies. The Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery is performing these operations through small cuts in the right side of the chest,” the spokesperson said.
“The heart tissues of these kids are delicate and need meticulous suturing for repair of defects and the blood volume being less needs attention to detail when putting on heart-lung machine,” said Dr Shyam Singh, head of the department.
“Anaesthetising a child for open heart surgery is among the most demanding tasks in our specialty — managing a small, physiologically delicate patient through bypass and the critical hours afterwards. A smooth recovery reflects coordination between anaesthesia, surgical and perfusion teams,” said Dr Puja Vimesh, head of the Cardiac Thoracic Anaesthesiology Department.
