Bengaluru: Victoria hospital gives back injured man his leg

Bengaluru: Let down by three private hospitals and poorer by the Rs 4 lakh he spent on them, 55-five-year-old Thimmaveddi from Ballari finally has the government-run Victoria hospital in Bengaluru to thank for his recovery from a serious accident that crushed his leg two years ago.

Hit by a lorry and suffering from acute pain in his injured limb, he first approached a nearby private hospital, which performed a surgery to fix it , but botched it up so badly that the rod used to fix his leg broke after a while. He then went to other private hospitals, which too performed surgeries, fixing  another rod to support his limb, but the fracture did not heal.

“I was in excruciating pain and had all lost hope,” recalls Thimmaveddi. Depressed over the failed surgeries which had left his leg shorter by three inches and cost him Rs 4 lakh, he decided to finally try his luck at the  government-run Victoria Hospital in Bengaluru.

It turned out to be the best decision he could have made.  A team of orthopaedics at the hospital studied his case and  decided to do bone grafting and limb lengthening to help him recover the use of his leg. "He had a trochanteric hip fracture and came to us with six- inch shortening of limb. He had already tried three hospitals and all the surgeries had failed. So we had to be extra cautious," says  Dr Ramalingaiah, professor of orthopaedics at the hospital, who operated on Thimmaveddi with  a team of other orthopaedics.

“It was a three- hour long surgery where  limb lengthening was achieved by transporting bone to it from elsewhere. The lengthening has been successful, although his leg could still  be a half- inch short of normal.  But he can now  walk without any difficulty," assures the doctor.

A happy Thimmavedi has been discharged from the hospital after a month of  physiotherapy. The surgery, which could have cost him lakhs at any  private hospital , was performed here for a mere Rs 25,000. Doubly satisfied as a result, he exults, " I am really glad that I can walk normally again."