In a first for public sector, surgeons trained at Delhi’s MAMC and Lok Nayak Hospital to perform endoscopy

“In India most of the medical colleges do not have gastroenterology departments, which are normally the place where currently upper GI and lower GI endoscopy is done. This is why we decided that the establishment of an endoscopy facility under the departments of surgery would go a long way in getting the medical college setups and other surgical teams to detect surgical diseases much early and treat them because they are treated by surgeons themselves,” he added.

“In the department of general surgery in about 700 medical colleges across the country, we have become the first medical college to provide endoscopy in surgery,” he said.

Dr Lal said there was a nationwide shortage of gastroenterologists, especially in New Delhi, where Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, University College of Medical Sciences, Lady Hardinge Medical College and Vardhman Mahavir Medical College do not have endoscopy facilities.

Dr Lal said that training surgeons in endoscopy would also help cut waiting lists and reduce the load on gastroenterologists. “For example if a doctor has to do bariatric surgery, he has to see the stomach from inside and see before cutting the stomach to perform the surgery. If a doctor does an oesophageal reflux disease, the doctor has to see what the oesophagus looks like before he lands up doing his hiatus hernia surgery,” he said.

So far, over 300 patients have benefited from the facility, which provides various endoscopic procedures, including upper endoscopy for GERD, peptic ulcer, anaemia, cancers and gastritis, as well as diagnostic lower GI endoscopy for cancer, ulcerative colitis, inflammatory bowel disease and amoebiasis.