Elective surgeries resume in Chennai’s government hospitals

The procedures were put on hold because of the pandemic

After spending the last six months focusing primarily on COVID-19, a number of government hospitals have slowly started performing elective surgeries.

In the wake of COVID-19 cases, elective surgeries were put on hold in a number of government hospitals such as the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH). These hospitals had earmarked wards for COVID-19 patients and had been handling hundreds of patients in the last six months. They have resumed elective surgeries with precautionary measures in place.

RGGGH, which has been handling thousands of COVID-19 patients, started to perform elective surgeries from Monday. “Every day, we perform 15 to 20 emergency surgeries. We had four to five elective surgeries on Monday that included neuro and ENT. We can increase the number of surgeries slowly as we are handling several COVID-19 patients. We are readying the operation theatre for cardiac procedures too,” E. Theranirajan, Dean of RGGGH, said.

He added that prior to surgery, patients were screened for COVID-19.

“If they are clinically symptomatic, we do a CT scan. If there are any findings, we put the surgery on hold,” he added.

At Government Stanley Medical College Hospital, a senior doctor said they had started to take up elective surgeries last month. “It is slowly picking up. We are doing RT-PCR tests for the patients before the surgeries,” he said.

Another surgeon said they started performing surgeries in July. “We have been doing all surgeries — both minor and major — except transplant and open heart surgeries. We have been doing both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 work. All standard universal precautions and protocols are being followed,” he said.

P. Vasanthamani, Dean of Government Kilpauk Medical College Hospital, said the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (OG), Burns and Orthopaedics had been continuously performing elective surgeries.

“Nearly 50% of our beds are allocated for COVID-19 patients. So, we have about 600 beds for OG, paediatrics, burns and cardiology units. We have not stopped elective surgeries. While cardiology is doing limited procedures, both surgery and urology departments are performing elective surgeries,” she said.

Affiliate assistance

Earlier, the hospital referred a few cases to its affiliated institute, Government Royapettah Hospital (GRH), and also the Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super Speciality Hospital. KMC and GRH have performed a total of 5,000 surgeries from April to September.

This included 3,383 major surgeries.

As elective surgeries are back on track, safety of the patient and health workforce was the main aim, a doctor of Government Kasturba Gandhi Hospital for Women and Children said. “We have now started performing elective surgeries with COVID-19 precautions. However, we do not encourage surgery if a patient belongs to the high risk category, that is has diabetes or hypertension or is morbidly obese, and if it can be postponed for two to three months later. Such patients require in-patient care before the surgery and this is a risk. We are doing the necessary investigations – RT-PCR test and CT scan – prior to surgery,” she said

She said that doctors followed all safety precautions and educated the patients.

“Still, we have patient relatives crowding at the hospital. Most of them keep their masks lowered and this is worrying as the COVID-19 incidence is rising in the city,” she added.

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