Spine for a change

The two-level disc replacement surgery recently undertaken in a Delhi hospital was the third in the world and the first to be carried out in India.

By Manisha

A medical team replaced on October 20, two spinal discs in a patient at the Max Balaji Hospital in New Delhi. Dr Baachan Singh, senior consultant surgery, assisted Dr Bipin Walia, senior consultant spinal specialist and neurosurgeon, and Dr Harshavardhan Hegde, a senior orthopaedics consultant and spinal surgeon.

The patient Raj, 23 from Chennai, had been employed in the administrative wing of a hospital in Allahabad when, three years ago, entirely mirthful birthday bumps damaged his spine. With persistent back pain, he went in for alternative medicine therapy; but a year later, the pain had become unbearable. Magnetic Resonance Imaging reports showed a damaged spine. When physiotherapy and medication failed to show results, he opted for artificial disc replacement (ADR).

The SB III Charité Disc replacement method was developed at the Berlin Charité Clinic in Germany through cooperation between leading orthopaedic spine specialists and the staff
at Link Spine Group in the mid-1980s. Clinical studies have documented the European experience with this disc since 1987. As mentioned in Spine-health.com, "Worldwide experience with this unconstrained anatomic disc replacement is now greater than 10,000 cases." Since the SB Charité Intervert ebral Disc Spacer is a high-tech prosthesis system comprising two endplates made of cobalt-chromium alloy, India has had the distinction of a mere 15 patients thus spinally articulated. What makes the recent case stand out is the fact that it was the third in the world where a two-level disc replacement had been carried out, and first in India.

The Indian patient got immediate post-surgical relief. He was able to walk for half an hour from the second day onwards, and today his pain has subsided completely.

As a corollary, the ADR procedure should boost medical tourism-which the government is busily, if controversially, promoting in a big way-substantially. In India, a single disc costs about US$ 1,300: in the US, it costs 10 times this amount. The cost of a single-level procedure in India is about Rs 1.5 lakh (US$ 3,500), compared to US$ 18,000-20,000 in the US.

After Max Balaji placed the news on its Website, it has been receiving calls from abroad. "Over 15 patients have called us, and they want to fly down for this surgery," says Dr Walia. Dr Hegde holds that medical facilities in India are at par with the best in the world