The Department of Cardiothoracic & Vascular Surgery, JIPMER in collaboration with the Puducherry Association of Cardiac Thoracic & Vascular Surgeons has conducted the Pediatric Cardiac Surgical Workshop and CME - ‘Mending the Little Hearts’ from January 22 to 24 , with the aim of setting up a full-fledged PediatricCardiac Surgical Unit at JIPMER.
 

According to a release, here, Dr. Subhash Chandra Parija, Director, JIPMER inaugurated the CME on Wednesday in the presence of Dr.Krishna S. Iyer, Executive Director, Pediatric & Congenital Heart Surgery, Dr. Parvathy U. Iyer, Director, Paediatric Cardiac Intensive Care from Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, New Delhi, and Dr. Ashok Shankar Badhe, Medical Superintendent, JIPMER.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Parija said that JIPMER has been growing fast in various disciplines performing high-end healthcare services for the poor patients including various transplant programmes such as liver, skin, hand, kidney and corneal transplants and it is also succeeding in its proposal to start a separate 'Institute of Multi-Organ Transplant', 'Institute of Neurosciences', and 'Institute of Cardiac Sciences' in a single campus in an area of about 80 acres in Puducherry. He also assured that JIPMER will have a multi-disciplinary full-fledged Pediatric Cardiac Surgical Unit soon to cater to the needs of patients of JIPMER.

Prof. Ashok S. Badhe, Medical Superintendent and Anesthesiologist, said that nearly 100 newborns are born with heart defects every day in the world and hence it is a demand to develop facilities to serve the need of the society. Dr. K.S. Iyer, a leading Pediatric Cardiac surgeon of the Asian continent, who has pioneered to set up the pediatric cardiac surgical unit at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi and also at many centres across the country including Sri Sathya Sai Institute at Puttaparthy, said, ‘JIPMER’ is potentially a fertile ground to establish a world class pediatric cardiac surgical unit as it has all the infrastructure and system in place’. Both the guest experts volunteered to help in transferring the necessary skills to train the faculty, staff and the system to start the pediatric cardiac surgical unit at JIPMER.

Prof. B.V. Sai Chandran, the head of cardiothoracic surgery & vascular surgery, JIPMER described that the most complex and technically demanding part of cardiac surgery is performing heart operations on newborns and infants as it is several times more challenging than a heart transplant operation as it requires an absolute multi-disciplinary approach as a team involving cardiologists, Anesthesiologsts, Pediatricians, Intensivists, Perfusionists, nurses, and other supporting staff.