Kolkata: Planned surgeries, OPD footfalls go up to pre-Covid level at city hospitals – ET HealthWorld

“Elective surgeries started picking up fast from first week of February and now we are close to the pre-pandemic stage,” said Pradip Tondon, CEO of Belle Vue Clinic.

Hospitals had kept their planned surgeries on hold for about three weeks when the Covid graph started surging in January, as directed by the state health department.
“Even a few weeks ago, we were conducting barley 20 surgeries a day against 55 to 60 that we did in pre-Covid times. Now the number has gone up to around 45 surgeries a day. We hope to swing back to full capacity once the patient flow from Bangalesh normalises,” said Sudipta Mitra, CEO Peerless Hospital.

The OPD footfall, too, has risen to 70% to 95% of the pre-pandemic footfall.
“At Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences, we are now conducting about 10 cardiac and 30 non-cardiac surgeries a day along with 40 cardiac procedures. Things are almost back to normalcy,” said R Venkatesh, regional director (east) Narayana Health.

“The OPD numbers are rising fast which is a precursor to planned surgery cases. We expect to reach pre-pandemic planned surgery count in the next three to four weeks, if we don’t see any further rise is Covid cases,” said Pratyush Srivastava, zonal director, Fortis Anandapur.

Desun Hospital director Kamalika Dutta said that even Cathlab cases had gone down to almost half during the third wave peak.

“It is a good sign that surgeries have started picking up from this week along with Cathlab procedures,” said Dutta.
Smaller units like Manipal Hospital Salt Lake used to conduct 15 planned OTs a day earlier

“We currently are doing about nine planned surgeries on a daily average,” said Arindam Banerjee, director Manipal Hospital Salt Lake.
Many doctors getting infected and patients afraid of visiting hospitals during the surge had affected surgeries and OPD services. “Before the pandemic we were clocking around 30 to 35 surgeries a day. Now we are at about 20 to 25 a day,” said Medica Superspecialty Hospital deputy medical director Amit Ray.

Even as surgeons like Suddhasattwa Sen were ready to take up planned surgeries, patients were not ready during the surge. “In GI laparoscopy cancer surgeries alone we would do about 40 to 50 procedures a month before pandemic, the number had dipped to around 20. Now it’s about 35,” said Sen who heads the department of GI HPB and oncosurgery at AMRI Dhakuria.