An emergency toll-free number for the State's health insurance scheme helped a 27-year-old get timely treatment at the Government Stanley Hospital. A week ago, construction worker, Rajadurai Rathnamani from Nagercoil, visited the hospital in Royapuram in a serious condition.
“I have suffered from severe pain for many months,” says Rajadurai, who was put on ventilator support when he first arrived at the hospital. Some weeks ago, Rajadurai had undergone an operation to remove pancreatic stones in a private hospital but had developed severe bleeding in the post-operative period. He was later referred to the Government Stanley Hospital where doctors found that he was vomiting blood and had rectal bleeding.
Doctors at the hospital, P. Ravichandran, professor and head of department, Institute of Surgical Gastroenterology and R. Sukumar, assistant professor of intervention radiology identified that the bleeding was from a pseudo-aneurysm in Rajadurai's pancreas. The aneurysm had ruptured into his bowel area.
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“Trauma caused due to surgery was the reason,” said Dr. Ravichandran. “Since the patient had already been operated on, we wanted to approach the problem in a non-surgical way.”
Doctors approached the hospital's dean S. Geethalakshmi and requested her to avail of the Chief Minister's Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme to purchase consumables for the non-surgical procedure.
Within an hour, we purchased platinum coils for the procedure, said Dr. Ravichandran. “This was then injected into the bleeding site through micro catheters.” Using a selective angiogram procedure, Dr. Sukumar, successfully inserted three coils with a 2 mm diameter and a 2 cm length into the patient to stop the bleeding.
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“The scheme allows for an emergency provision to be exercised when the patient is in urgent need of medical attention,” says Dr. Sukumar. “When the liaison officer is unavailable and pre-authorisation cannot be received on time, a toll-free number can be called that will generate an emergency number for the patient with an allowance for documents to be submitted within 24 hours.”
Six non-surgical treatments at RGGGH
On April 9 and 10, the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital performed non-surgical procedures on six persons, including a five-year-old girl, with congenital heart diseases. The hospital availed of the CM's Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme to perform the surgeries that were free for the patients but averaged Rs. 2 lakh each.