January 25, 2009

Ramakant Panda: Safest Hands in the World

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , — Sucheta Dalal @ 8:12 pm

The team of doctors that operated on Prime Minister of India, Dr.Manmohan Singh on 24th January 2000 was led by Dr. Ramakant Panda, a man whose name comes up very high on any list of the world’s top heart surgeons who perform high-risk surgeries. He is amazingly committed surgeon renowned as the man with the safest hands in the world and a specialist in beating heart surgery. We were fascinated with Dr.Panda’s amazing story when we interviewed him for our Pathbreakers series in MoneyLIFE Magazine and his labour of love – the Asian Heart Institute in Mumbai.
Here is an excerpt from that interview… you can read the full interview in Pathbreakers 2 which will be released by G V Ramakrishna, former Member of the Planning Commission on 15th February at YASHADA, Pune. If you would like to attend the launch, do write to me.

“The future of healthcare is not in nice interiors but in higher standards of patient care”: Dr.Ramakant Panda”

Interview by Sucheta Dalal & Debashis Basu

Coming from a village in Orissa, Dr Panda was a topper at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, but dejected by favouritism, he decided to go abroad. Good for him and for India because Dr Panda went on to do his Fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic, US, where he was trained by the pioneer of bypass surgery, Dr Floyd D Loop. Dr Panda has done over 10,000 bypass surgeries, making him one of the most prolific surgeons in the world. More importantly, he has performed more than 1,500 high-risk surgeries which have offered new life to many patients who were considered ‘inoperable’. He is the first in India to have introduced beating heart surgery, as well as ‘off-pump’ bypass surgery. His failure rate is just 0.5% against a world average of 2%. But being the top heart surgeon is not what makes him stand apart. It is his integrity, passion and humanism. One unique honour he has received was the prestigious Rashtriya Samman from the Income Tax department, for being one of the highest taxpayers between 1994-95 and 1998-99. Unlike many top doctors, Dr Panda refuses to be paid in cash. The same integrity and zeal has gone into setting up of the Asian Heart Institute in Mumbai, probably India’s best heart hospital. Here is his inspirational story

ML: Could you tell us about your education and family background?
RP: I was born in Orissa in a place called Jajpur. My parents were landowners. I spent my early childhood with my grandfather who was a freedom fighter. He was the headmaster of a school and a strict disciplinarian. For several years, my elder brother, a cousin and I lived with my grandfather. I was with him till he died; I was then in the fifth standard. After that, I returned to live with my parents. My grandfather’s discipline had a tremendous impact on me. He loved us; at the same time, he was very strict. He used to insist that we wash our dishes after meals and wash our own clothes.

ML: Did you know by then that you wanted to be a doctor?
RP: I had some interest, since one of my uncles is an ENT surgeon. Then, one of my cousins got married to a doctor; that had some impact on me. I clearly remember one incident that made me aspire to become a heart surgeon. In 1969, LIFE magazine had done a cover feature on Dr Denton A Cooley (president and surgeon-in-chief, who founded the Texas Heart Institute), one of the all-time great heart surgeons, who had done the first heart transplant in the US. My uncle had brought a copy of the magazine, which had a big picture of Dr Cooley. That is when I had the dream of becoming a heart surgeon.
I studied for two years at BJD College and then went to SCV Medical College; I was the university topper in both places. It is at Cuttack Medical College that I began thinking of becoming a heart surgeon. The actual drive to become a heart surgeon came in the third year when clinical postings began; my first clinical posting was in the cardiology department. I was fascinated with heart surgery. I was always among the top five in the class at the medical college. For a year after that, I did my post-graduation from Berhampur Medical College, which is near Cuttack. I then appeared for the all-India entrance test to get into AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) at New Delhi. I did my post-graduation in surgery and heart-surgery there between 1980 and 1985. That is where the real grinding took place. I was always a hard-working student, but the actual drive to excel and do better in life happened at AIIMS. Those were among the toughest five years of my life, but they were also the formative years, which made me work hard. I often work about 18 hours a day. Actually, I used to work 18 hours a day on an average; now I have cut down to 14-16 hours a day. It was a really tough time for me.

ML: Is that when you decided to go to Cleveland?
RP: That was when I decided to go out of the country to get more training. In those days, in India, there were only four or five hospitals in the whole country doing heart surgery and they operated as a close-knit group. So if your boss was not happy with you, you were gone, because everybody knew one another. So there wasn’t much opportunity. I knew then that I had to go to some good place outside India and come back. So I gave those two qualifying exams for the US: it was called USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Examination) those days. It was getting tougher and tougher for doctors to go to the US, but I passed both the exams and began to search for institutes which offered the specialisation I was looking for. One of the consultants at AIIMS helped me get an appointment with Dr Dudley Johnson. Those days, Cleveland Clinic was the best in cardiac care. Luckily, a friend of mine went and spoke to the chief of cardiology about me and they took me in. So I went to Cleveland in 1986. Initially, I was under a culture shock. But that is where my whole life changed. In six months, I became the pet of my boss, so much so that even now we have a father-son relationship. His name was Dr Floyd D Loop (chairman and CEO of Cleveland Clinic from 1989 to 2004). If you ask me, he was one of the founding fathers of bypass surgery. Within six to 12 months, I was fairly close to him and that is where I learnt all my surgical and technical skills.

ML: When you decided to return to India, did you know which city you would come back to?
RP: I just wanted to set up a heart hospital; that was my dream – my aim was to do it in Delhi. I knew people there. In those days, there was only Escorts Hospital and AIIMS; Batra Hospital had started but it wasn’t doing well and Modi Hospital was supposed to come up. Once I decided to return, I started coming to India on short trips from 1990 onwards. The first time I came here, I thought ‘no way I want to come back’. Then I introspected and decided that I did want to return, so I’d better start acclimatising myself. I came to India eight times in the next two years.

ML: At that stage, when you were looking to be attached to a hospital, why did you not consider Escorts with Dr Naresh Trehan?
RP: At that time, I had a dream but no money. So, I had to join some hospital whether it was at Bengaluru, Delhi or Mumbai. Yes, I know Naresh, but I also knew I would not be able to grow there. So, in 1993, I started practising at Jaslok and, after a few months, at Breach Candy Hospital. My experience at Cleveland helped, because the technology and expertise was 10 years ahead of other places. I started doing the most risky cases. My first five or six cases were those of patients that nobody wanted to touch. All of them survived and that created an impression; there has been no looking back since. One case I remember was that of a senior IAS officer – he is still alive. He had a major cardiac arrest and his heart stopped beating for 20 minutes. He needed an angioplasty and most of the other surgeons refused. At that time, I had just come back from the US and had no case. So, when the family asked me, I said I will take the case provided you don’t sue me. He was saved and I remember I was by their side for almost two months. A few cases like that established my reputation. I was still looking for a place, since my dream was this hospital. My NRI friend and I started looking for a plot, even though I had no money, no car and no place to stay. I have probably looked at every single piece of land in Mumbai – from Cuffe Parade to Panvel – you name it and I have seen it. If I found a good location, the title was not clear; and I was getting frustrated. I used to talk to my boss at Cleveland. He said, “Why are you rotting there, why don’t you come back?” I told him, “I will try for a few more years and if I still don’t get what I want, I will come back (to the US).” Meanwhile, my career had zoomed professionally. I almost finalised a place near Inorbit Mall. But a close friend, MR Chandurkar, chairman of IPCA Laboratories, said: “Nothing doing, we will find you a better place.” We got to know about a plot of land at the Bandra-Kurla Complex under the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA), which was soon advertised.

ML: Tell us a little about your work in surgery. We learn that you have the safest hands in operations with the highest success rate.
RP: Yes, my surgical failure rate, on an average, in the last seven or eight years is 0.5%, while the US average is 2%-3%.
I still spend around 10-12 hours out of my 16-18-hour working day on my clinical practice. That is close to my heart. I still do the highest number of most difficult cases around the country and I don’t want to give that up. I have done over 10,000 operations till date; even tomorrow, I have six to eight heart operations. It is only on weekends that I catch up with research and other work.

ML: You have an unusual honour among doctors for being among the highest taxpayers…RP: It is a funny thing; I always took my fees by cheque, even in 1996 when it was not usual. So, my first accountant asked me, “Doctor, what is your cash income?” I told him this is all the income I have; there is no cash income. He said nobody would believe it and that I should better start taking cash as the income-tax officials won’t believe it either and will claim that you earn thrice as much. I said, “OK, let them come and check my house, if they want to rip up my sofa to look for cash, I don’t mind.” That’s when I had come back to India; and, from day one, I have been taking only cheque payments and the tax authorities gave me the highest taxpayer award in 1996.

… for more read Pathbreakers 2 to be released on 15th February 2009.

Viewing 29 Comments

 
close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus