Parashuram, a 32-year old driver, used to suffer from abdominal and lower back pain for the last few years. He used to take painkillers for some time but when the pain got unbearable, he got an MRI scan at a laboratory in Mumbai where he stayed.
The scan revealed multiple renal calculi – the deposit of stones in the kidney.
He came back to his native village Chaudapur at Afzalpur taluk in Kalaburagi district and consulted Ravindra Patil, urologist who runs a medical establishment in Kalaburagi – Patil Nursing Home.
A fresh CT scan revealed the same thing and he was admitted in the first week of June.
A team of doctors, comprising Smitha Patil, Rahul Patil, Ajay Jure, Krishna Rao, Roshinidevi Patil, Irfan, headed by Mr. Ravindra Patil operated on the patient for two hours on June 7. “The whole kidney was almost filled with stones. Since the patient was a daily wager doing physical labour, we decided not to go for a surgical incision that would take a long time to heal. We instead opted for a percutaneous nephrolithotomy or keyhole surgery which involves making a small hole on the body to gain access to the affected part of the kidney and removing the stones. We removed 236 stones of different sizes and shapes,” Dr. Rahul Patil told The Hindu .
“The exact number of stones present in the kidney could not be known in the scan as multiple stones were sitting on each other. We removed 236 stones. Some of the larger stones that could not be removed through the 8 mm hole were broken and removed,” Mr. Ravindra Patil said.
According to the doctors, the formation of kidney stones must have started about a decade ago. The patient might have, however, not felt the pain until the kidney was almost filled with the stones.
“There is no pain at present. The operation did not cost me a single rupee as the procedure was performed under Ayushman Bharat and Arogya Karnataka schemes,” Mr. Parashuram told The Hindu on the eve of his discharge on Tuesday.
“A sum of around ₹30,000 will be reimbursed by the government towards the cost of the surgery. If the same operation is done in a corporate hospital, it would cost around ₹2 lakh,” Dr. Smitha Patil, director of the Patil Nursing Home said.
