Kolkata: Doctors at SSKM Hospital implanted pacemakers on 22 patients in less than 10 hours in a single day

KOLKATA: Doctors at the cardiology department of state run SSKM Hospital created a sort of a feat recently by implanting pacemaker on 22 patients in a single day in about 9 hours. The doctors however said they were not there to create a record but it all happened because of the patient load. While most patients were part of the planned surgery, few were referred from the emergency department.


On February 3, the team of doctors led by cardiologist Saroj Mandal set up shop at the department’s around 10 am. One by one the team started implanting the pacemakers on patients. While Mandal was working on one patient, the next patient was being prepared with anesthesia by the team to save time. When the team of doctors were about to close shop, few more patients came in from the emergency wing including an 80-year-old, a former professor of NRS Medical College and Hospital who needed the pacemaker immediately.

“Ours is one of the busiest departments in the country when it comes to pacemaker implantation procedure. But this particular day was the busiest for us. We did not plan to create any feat. But by the end of the day we ended up implanting 22 pacemakers,” said Dr Saroj Mandal.

Assisted by doctors – Koushik Bandyopadhyay, Subhendu Chatterjee, Shinath Singh, Aditya Verma and R Vignesh, by the time the procedures were completed it was around 7,30 pm.

The 22 procedures included implanting 14 double chamber pacemakers, two ICDs (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) while the rest were single chamber implants.

The state’s premier hospital has the highest number of patient footfall in West Bengal. Since Mamata Banerjee’s government has made treatment free in state-run hospitals, all the 22 procedures were conducted free of cost.