Bhopal India

I'm writing this after leaving Bhopal. I did not have good internet access so I was unable to put in an entry. This will probably be the last entry for me. I'll put some pictures up also.

Jeev Sewa Sansthan (JSS) is a charitable organization which holds a urology camp twice a year. Patients receive free urological care. The camp was held from Sept 20 to Oct 8th. It starts with a triage process in which 1600 patients arrived from the surrounding areas and 200 were found to be surgical candidates and healthy enough to undergo surgery. Once a patient is scheduled for surgery they stay free of charge. The ORs started on Sept 29th and 10 urologists came for the camp. Dr. Das and I were the only two from the US. We had 3 OR rooms and six OR tables. There were a number of cases including large TURPs, DVIU, PCNL and URS.

When we arrived in Bhopal there was a big welcoming party at the airport complete with flowers. We went straight to the hospital to visit our patients for the following day. Everytime I walk into a hospital here, I'm reminded of everything I take forgranted in the US. The ward is a large room filled with beds of people. There's no privacy. Men, women and children were all in one room.

The ORs were better. The had decent equipment and all were donations. I did several interesting cases. The first one was a little boy with a solitary kidney with an obstructing megaureter. He previously had a reimplant but comes in with a chief complaint of urinary retention. On cystoscopy he had a large cavity 1cm away from the bladder neck which was the residual ureteral stump. It was likely causing the bladder obstruction. We went ahead and excised it.

Another interesting case was a little girl with XGP. We performed a subcapsular nephrectomy. That was a very difficult case because of all the inflammation. There were no planes. The last interesting case was a 40 year old woman with solitary kidney and UPJ obstruction s/p open pyeloplasty. She restrictured and it was treated with an endopyelotomy which failed. She had a nephrostomy tube in but her creatinine was increasing. We did a ureterocalicostomy and nephropexy. That was another very difficult case because of the amount of scarring from her other procedures.

The people here are so friendly and very dedicated to the patients. It's inspiring. All the urologists here go out of their way to teach me. I've learned so much during this trip and I'm sad to be leaving. At the same time, I'm utterly grateful that I had this experience. Dr. Das has been a wonderful mentor and I've operated with excellent surgeons during my time here in Bhopal and in Bangladesh. I'll never forget it.

~Jhtamola