Nagpur: The deadlier Covid-19 second wave is finally receding, but not before exposing lacuane in the healthcare system.
Complications like post-Covid pulmonary fibrosis, especially among patients who required ICU care and mechanical ventilation during Covid-19 treatment, have highlighted the need for specialized pulmonary care in the post-pandemic times.
Doctors said many lung-related complications need specialized doctors — pulmonologists, but this super specialty has very limited seats in the country and produces less than 500 doctors a year for the huge population of India.
“Pulmonology branch was never in focus before the Covid struck.
In fact, it has come into limelight with the pandemic only,” said pulmonologist Dr Rajesh Swarnakar, who is also national general secretary of Indian Chest Society (ICS).
“Already less in numbers, pulmonologists are seeing many post-Covid patients who had no clue that they could have come to a lungs specialist earlier.
People are unnecessarily continuing many drugs and lacking proper monitoring by a lungs specialist,” he said adding the country will need more trained pulmonologists in next five years.
This is, however, hardly possible in the present scenario.
There are only 491 seats of MD respiratory medicine available throughout the country.
This number is very less compared to other specializations like medicine (3,188 seats), anaesthesia (2,463), obstetrics and gynaecology (2,013), paediatrics (1,672), and radiology (1,212).
“In super specialty hospital at GMCH, we have only 4 PG seats for pulmonary medicine,” said Dr Sushant Meshram, head of the department.
“Despite limited in numbers, my team used to treat about 150 patients during the Covid peak and saved many lives.
Pulmonology as a specialization needs attention of the policy-makers,” he added.
Dr Radha Munje, professor and head of the department of pulmonary medicine, IGGMC, said the specialization was restricted to TB treatment earlier and was neglected.
“IGGMC also has only 4 PG seats for this subject.
A nationwide reform to increase PG seats in this super specialty is crucial because all future pandemics will definitely be through airway route,” she added.
Patients generally prefer to get treated in private set-up where pulmonologists are limited.
As a result, they have to pay more.
“Experts of respiratory medicine deal with whole array of disorders like asthma, COPD, pneumonias, interstitial lung diseases, lung cancer and tuberculosis.
During the pandemic, we came across several examples in which ventilators were available, but they were useless as there were no experts to operate them,” said a member of state Covid task force, who happens to be a pulmonologist.
Long term lung plan Covid-19 has made us understand the importance of lungs Pulmonary medicine is a subspecialty of internal medicine, now a super specialty It focuses on prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of lung and respiratory tract Against 3,188 seats for general medicine, 2,463 for anaesthesia, 2,013 for OBGY, pulmonary medicine has only 491 PG seats nationwide With more patients reporting with post-Covid lung fibrosis, they need more specialists in future Now, the nation needs a major push to pulmonary medicine branch at PG level