The concept of jugaad — making the most out of things you have around you — has always been a very Indian thing, it’s in our blood. But when government hospitals like the Osmania General Hospital (OGH) devises a method to save a man’s life by combining two rarely performed procedures and using only materials at their disposal, it’s not jugaad — it’s ingenuity.
Dr C.G. Raghuram, superintendent and Head of Anaesthesia at OGH, and his team recently performed the world’s second autologous liver transplant — where the patient’s liver is isolated and operated on, rather than getting a replacement — and by combining it with an autologous blood transfusion.
With the 10-hour-surgery on a 25-year-old security guard from the city, they created history. “He went to many hospitals, but he didn’t have the financial resources to bear the cost of his treatments, and he was desperate,” Dr Raghuram explains, “By the time he came here, he had many collaterals — he had enlarged blood vessels in the abdominal wall and lower limbs, and they were rupturing and giving way.”
After more than a month of planning and preparing, the doctors at the hospital decided that they would induce hypothermia in the liver to save it rather than hope for a liver transplant match that might have taken ages.
“For us, the biggest challenge was, we didn’t want to lose any blood whatsoever,” Dr Raghuram goes on, “So using a hemodialysis catheter (where IV tubes are used to connect blood flow from the upper to the lower halves of the body) we were able to control the blood flow as well as the pressure; this helps recycle the blood rather than taking it out.”
The procedure went successfully, he says. The patient is now well on the road to recovery and the hospital is bearing the costs of his stay.
“His parents don’t have jobs, and obviously he is without an income,” Dr Raghuram says, “So we decided to keep him here, so that he gets proper nutrition and even the emotional, physical support he requires.”
While government hospitals in general treat patients for free, procedures like these are what doctors at state institutions live for. For them, it’s about saving lives rather than their own jobs, says Dr Raghuram, who has worked in government hospitals all his life, spending 35 years of his career in Kurnool, Tirupati, Warangal and now at Osmania General Hospital.
“We organise things ourselves, through philanthropy and other equipment that are at our disposal,” he says, adding that the government also helps when such complex surgeries come up.
“Only government hospitals can think of such innovations... we are driven by two simple policies,” concludes Raghuram while he adds, “We have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Secondly, we care about the pulse of our patients, not the purse. So whatever the topography of the hospital, a patient who is critical will get justice here.”
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