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Manipal : Dr Aravind Kumar Bishnoi, Professor in Cardiovascular and thoracic Surgery of Kasturba Medical College and Hospital, Manipal said that, “Hospital started Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery in 2018 and performed 100 Cardiac surgeries on Children successfully. Earlier pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac surgery was not available in costal Karnataka and sick newborns and Children had to go either to Kochin or Bangalore for urgent treatment. Many of these children are not even fit to travel because of critical illness and distance”.

Addressing a press meet at Udupi Press Club, Dr Arvind Bishnoi said that Kasturba Medical College and Hospital, Manipal took initiative to provide these services in Manipal and became first Center in costal Karnataka, from Kasaragod to Goa to provide these service. Programme was started with two pediatric Cardiologist and Pediatric Cardiac surgeons in 2018. In December 2019, 100 surgeries completed. It was a difficult task to convince Pediatricians and parents that surgeries can be done in Manipal.It was well imprinted in everybody mind that Heart disease of children mean to go to Metro city and facilities not available nearby hospital. Our initial few patients were newborn on ventilator not in position to shift and got operated here. But now all types of surgeries even most complex one were done in last 2 years. Slowly by word of mouth publicity, patient started coming still Majority of our patients (45%) were here than 1 month”, Dr Arvind Bishnoi added

Dr Avinash Shetty, Medical Superintendent congratulated the team and said that, “Today with lot of good team efforts from Department of Pediatrics, Department of OBG and Fetal Medicine, Department of Neonatology, Department of Radiology, Department of Cardiac Anesthesiology, in addition to Cardiology and cardiac surgery. Kasturba Hospital run full spectrum of Pediatric heart care, starting from Antenatal Diagnosis and counselling, Cath lab procedure or Cardiac surgeries and excellent post-operative ICU care”.

“Still people need to be more aware about availability of services at their door step so that no critical patient has to risk their life by unnecessary travel to bigger center” he added. Dr Leslie Edward S Lewis, Professor and Head, Department of Neonatology, Dr Akkatai S Teli, consultant, Pediatric Cardiology were present in the press meet