Tirupati: BIRRD to have bone bank soon
Birrd hospital Director Madan Mohan Reddy
Tirupati: Sri Balaji Institute of Surgery, Research and Rehabilitation for the Disabled (BIRRD) hospital in Tirupati will soon have a distinction of setting up a national level 'Bone Bank'. It will be beneficial to the bone cancer and hip replacement patients.
Addressing the media in Tirupati on Friday, BIRRD Director Dr M Madan Mohan Reddy said that an in-house bone bank will be of utmost importance while treating cancer patients. "Gaps have to be filled when a segment of patients' bones is cut during surgeries. The bone bank will come to address these gaps," Dr Reddy said.
BIRRD will be the fourth institute in the country to have a bone bank after AIIMS – New Delhi, Tata Memorial hospital – Mumbai and Apollo hospitals, Chennai.
Unveiling the development agenda, Dr Reddy said that to reduce the waitlist for the surgeries, three new operation theatres are being built with the state-of-the-art facilities meant for joint or hip replacements; spine surgeries and paediatric orthopaedic cases. To add to the existing 16 rooms, 50 new rooms for the patients will be completed within a month.
The long wait of six months to one year for surgeries has come down considerably now. After the patients undergo diagnostic tests and proved to be fit for the surgeries, they will be operated on within 48 hours, he stated. To reduce the unwanted delay of getting CT and MRI scans done by sending the patients to SVIMS, the unit will come up in BIRRD itself within six weeks.
Dr Reddy said that spine surgeries which were unheard of in the BIRRD hospital previously are being done now. Two eminent doctors Dr Balamurugan and Dr Rakesh Shetty from Chennai are visiting the hospital once in a month to supervise and perform such surgeries.
Referring to the bionic arm which was launched in December 2020, Dr Reddy explained that it costs Rs 29 lakh in the market which the company has agreed to provide at Rs 2.7 lakh for BIRRD. As part of the outreach activities, the first camp will be held at Ongole on March 20.
Apart from these, a new canteen and medical shop will come up for which tenders were already called for. After resuming the services post Covid pandemic, the number of out-patients and surgeries have been increased every month. All the patients below the poverty line will get knee and hip replacements free of cost and for others only consumables will be charged. RMO Dr Kishore and Dr Chaitanya were present.