Patients relieved as palliative care OPD starts functioning

Sameer Singh

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, February 21

The palliative care outpatient department (OPD) has started functioning at Advanced Cancer Institute and Hospital in Bathinda. Apart from administering medicines to cancer patients battling with chronic to acute pain and providing them relief, the palliative unit also ensures that patients are in proper shape before being operated for different medical procedures/surgeries.

The OPD, which was started approximately 25 days ago, have been witnessing a sizable inflow of cancer patients at the hospital. According to doctors on a daily basis, they have been administering treatment to five to seven patients regularly.

Dr Sanjeev Kumar, anesthesiologist at the unit, said, “We have been getting a good response and many patients have received treatment at the unit. We use anaesthetic blocks and administer medicine in ganglion or nerves to subside pain. Rather than administering painkillers, which have side-effects and if used persistently and in a large quantity, they may result in failure of vital organs, we use anaesthetic blocks which relieve cancer patients from mild to excruciating pain without causing any side-effects. The unit also prepares a patient before performing an operation.”

Gurjot Singh (name changed), a patient of lung cancer who had come from Sardulgarh in Mansa, said, “Before starting my treatment at the new OPD of the cancer hospital, I would experience mild to severe pain on almost every alternate day. It has been around three weeks since treatment was started here and now I have felt pain relief.”

Dr Deepak Arora, Officiating Director, Advanced Cancer Institute, said, “The palliative OPD had been started for the past three weeks in the hospital and we have received a good response so far. We do not have a radiologist at the hospital. We need to conduct ultrasound to detect deep-seated blocks but in the absence of a radiologist, patients are not being screened.”