Tirupati: BIRRD now lays focus on spine surgeries

Tirupati: Sri Balaji Institute of Surgery, Research and Rehabilitation for the Disabled (BIRRD), an institution of national repute being run by TTD here, has been focusing now more on the degenerative conditions of the bones and joints from its objective of dealing with deformities.

As there was a paradigm shift in the disease which is evident from the fact that there are less number of deformities now with the complete eradication of polio and prenatal screening.

Recently, a team of doctors in the institute performed a spine and rehabilitation surgery on a 13-year-old girl C Indu from West Godavari district.

The director of the institute Dr M. Madan Mohan Reddy said that she was brought to the hospital with complaint of deformity of her back.

The doctors diagnosed it as 'Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis' which required surgical correction.

Dr Naveen and Dr Naresh Kumar performed this surgery with the help of Dr Rakesh, visiting spine surgeon from Apollo hospital, Chennai, who agreed to be part of the spine team of BIRRD.

The patient has been recovering fast and she was made to walk on the third day after surgery.

The director said that this surgery costs around Rs 6-7 lakh in corporate hospitals whereas it was done for only Rs 2.2 lakh, which is the cost of the implants used.

He called upon the people suffering from spine deformities to make use of the services at BIRRD and said that they were in the process of procuring high-end robotics for rehabilitation of spinal patients.

BIRRD was established by TTD to provide free surgeries to physically challenged persons in 1985. In the last 35 years, more than 13 lakh outpatients visited the hospital and around 1.5 lakh operations were performed till now and artificial limbs were provided to about one lakh patients from across the country.

Of late, the institute has been focusing on different orthopaedic subspecialties like joint replacement and reconstructive surgeries, arthroscopy surgeries, trauma (fractures and dislocations) and spine and rehabilitation surgeries.

The institute has been aiming to do knee and hip replacement as a day care procedure and regenerative therapy for knee pain and other musculoskeletal conditions.