Global Hospitals and Forte aim for excellence in healthcare through collaboration

By Fathima Riznaz Hafi

The Global Institute of Neurosciences and Spinal Disorders in India has been at the forefront of revolutionary medical procedures and performs outstanding work in all areas of spine surgery, ranging from scoliosis, cervical myelopathy, spine tumours, minimal access spine surgery, spine reconstructive surgery as well as complex brain surgery and neuro intervention.

 

Forte Group is the Country Office appointed by Global Hospitals Group, India to take care and serve Sri Lankan patients with the support of medical professionals and doctors in Sri Lanka.

 

Forte Group and the Global Hospitals Group are trying to bring doctors here periodically and hope in the future there will be more such collaboration and that the two countries and their medical fraternities will be closer together as this will lead to better healthcare delivery for the people of both countries.

 

Forte Group Chairman M.F.A. Riyas is dedicated to directing Sri Lankan patients to the best hospitals in India, so that they get the best of care while travelling there. At a media briefing on Monday (27), he introduced Sri Lankan patients who were successfully treated in India through the Global Hospitals team.

 

Global Health City Chennai India Institute of Neurosciences and Spinal Disorders Director/Senior Neurosurgeon Dr. K. Sridhar, who is in the country on an invitation by the Sri Lankan Orthopaedic Association said: “We come from different countries but we have the same issues everywhere; therefore interaction and collaboration amongst doctors is so important. We collaborate with doctors from Japan, South-east Asia, Middle East, US and Europe. Now technology is available – of course at a cost but now it is available everywhere and we can put our minds together and see how to make it more user-friendly, patient-friendly and how to take the available technology to society and I think this is the most important – how to take really good technology to society and decide what is appropriate for that society.

 

“What is appropriate for a society in Japan may not be apropriate for a society in Sri Lanka or India. What is appropriate in UK may not be appropriate in US. Our societies are different and our needs are different. What we need is appropriate technology in our society. What is important is excellence in healthcare. It’s not important that I do this fashionable surgery – what’s important is what we do we deliver well and deliver with excellence.

 

“Some of the complex work that we do in Chennai at the Global Hospitals is something that I’ve been speaking on in previous days that I’ve been here – I’ve had the opportunity and honour of addressing various medical societies here where we’ve spoken about some of the high-end work that we do. This time I spoke on the correction of Scoliosis, which means bent spine, where the spine is bent like an ‘S’ shape and how to correct it. It’s a very difficult surgery to do and requires a lot of expertise and experience.

 

“Being neurosurgeons, we also have great experience dealing with tumours in areas which control speech and hand function. And with these, what we are now doing – and we are one of the few centres in India who are doing it – which is we keep the patients awake and talking and performing actions while we operate on the brain. So the patient is absolutely awake and is talking like you and me. This is called an ‘Awake Craniotomy’ technique, which is not as commonly done as it should be; only a few centres have the technology to do this.”

 

To give a glimpse of the kind of work that they are doing in their facility in Chennai, they played a video of an awake craniotomy conducted by Dr. Sridhar. It is one of the most complex operations being performed in neurosurgery.

 

While the video clip was being played, Dr. Sridhar explained to the media: “The patient is talking while I’m operating on the brain; he is slightly drowsy but able to talk and answer our questions. I’m removing the tumour which is involving the speech centre of the brain – I want to know when I’m operating whether I’m affecting that speech centre – that is the importance of this. If his speech becomes problematic then I can proceed to do it in a different way.”

 

Dr. Sridhar went on to say that though the surgeries he is referring to are very complex, they are not as costly as one might think. “We are now performing more and more surgeries on the most intricate part of the brain, which is called the brain stem, which is actually the place that controls our breathing, our heart and our consciousness and surgery of the brain stem is now perhaps one of the most complex surgeries and now we are doing it. I have to say that we are not doing this surgery with technology that is not affordable – it is very affordable!”

 

“This is the message that is necessary to take out everywhere – that you can do excellence and top-rate surgery with appropriate technology. This is where we would like to collaborate with our colleagues from all parts of the world, including Sri Lanka to help patients get better,” he concluded.

Pix by Sameera Wijesinghe