By Sajeev K Peter

KUWAIT: A renowned Indian cardiac surgeon, who is on a three-day visit to Kuwait, suggested that “there is a broad scope of further enhancing the partnership between Kuwait and India in the field of healthcare.” Dr Naresh Trehan, founder chairman of India’s largest private medical institution Medanta – the Medicity, arrived in Kuwait at the invitation of the Indian Doctors Forum (IDF), to deliver the keynote speech during its eighth program titled ‘Cardiac Surgery 2022 – a Travel Through Time.’

“I have come with an open mind to see where we can find common ground between the medical profession, technology and expertise from both the Kuwaiti and Indian sides,” Dr Trehan, said addressing a press conference on Sunday. Having performed more than 50,000 open heart surgeries, Dr Trehan has carved out a niche for himself in the field of cardiology. During his three-day visit, he will speak at the Specialized Chest Hospital on the ‘surgical management of heart failure – assisted devices and management of complications’. He will also speak at the Faculty of Medicine on ‘New frontiers in Cardiology and cardiac surgery’.

“We have come a long way. When heart surgeries started in the late sixties or early seventies, the mortality rate was twenty percent. Now it is just .2 percent”, he said, speaking about the evolution and advancement of cardiovascular and cardiothoracic surgeries in India, particularly at his hospital. Dr Trehan said the success rate of coronary bypass surgeries at Medanta is 99.8 percent. “We perform around 6,000 heart surgeries every year.

As the largest private hospital in India and with around twelve years of experience, we have been able to accomplish what we set out to do. Today, we have patients coming from eighty different countries. More than thirty-four countries also send in their medical professionals to our institution for training.” Dr Trehan, who graduated from King George Medical College in India moved to the US in 1969, to continue his studies, at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, in Philadelphia and went on to practice at New York University Medical Center Manhattan from 1971 to 1988.

“At Medanta – the Medicity, we have done more than 100,000 live heart surgeries since 1995. We can also do surgeries with small incisions rather than cutting the whole rib cage open through a procedure called minimal invasive surgery,” he said. Answering a question on robotic surgeries, he said, “I was involved in the development of robots in India’s healthcare sector from the year 1995 onwards. I brought the first robot to India in the year 2000. We have been doing heart surgeries and all other surgeries with the help of robots since then. We perform around 700 robotics surgeries every year.”

“We will be very happy if we could develop a good relationship with the medical fraternity and the government of Kuwait to build on the goodwill that already exists between the two countries. We do share a lot of similarities in food, culture and we do have a lot of people speaking Arabic in India as well.” IDF President Amir Ahmad, who was also present at the press conference, outlined IDF’s Oration program that takes place at Regency Hotel on Monday.