Mucor cases testing time for surgeons & specialists

Nagpur: The surge in mucormycosis cases is giving sleepless nights to specialists who are burning the midnight oil to treat patients reporting in post Covid scenarios. Some surgeons and specialists are at the operation theatre non-stop from 6am to 2am.
Many doctors are also at the receiving end of irate relatives’ wrath over lack of enough live-saving medicines. Some ENT and dental surgeons say they haven’t seen such large number of cases in their career. Even neurosurgeons are facing similar situation.
Head and neck cancer surgeon Dr Shailesh Kothalkar said he starts surgeries at 6am and calls it a day only around 2am. “As medicines are not available now, the surgeries have nearly come to a halt. We are getting a lot of queries from doctors and relatives if they can admit their patients at our hospital. On Saturday, we performed only one surgery as the patient promised he will get the medicines. The surgeries are time consuming,” he said.
Dr Kothalkar said he has been performing 5 to 8 operations beside conducting regular rounds of hospitals since over last two months.
Dr Sandeep Anjankar, vitreo retina surgeon, said the injectable part does not take more than 5 to 10 minutes. “But our aim is to save vision or at least ensure the eyeballs remain intact. Those who came early were saved of vision loss. Our workload has increased manifold as patients of black fungus get admitted anytime and we have to rush at odd hours to see them at different hospitals,” said Dr Anjankar, who has also teamed up with Dr Kothalkar.
Dr Chandrashekhar Meshram, neurologist and president of Tropical Neurology Group, said they haven’t seen so much cases in their lifetime as they have seen in one month. “In my four decades, we rarely came across such large number of cases,” he said.
Indian Dental Association (IDA) president Dr Girish Bhutada said an oral maxillofacial surgeon is among the five specialists who are part of mucor surgeries. “Now, dental surgeons are the first to detect mucormycosis,” he said. Early reporting of patient and early diagnosis by the dentist reduce the complications.
IDA secretary Dr Poonam Hudiya said some cases are getting treated on OPD basis but lots of surgeries are taking place daily. “IDA has issued guidelines to treat all symptoms as indicative of mucormycosis and initiate proper diagnosis,” she said.