Ruia becomes popular for Total Knee Replacement surgeries

Tirupati: Here is a good news to the patients who have been looking for Total Knee Replacement (TKR). The government-run Ruia Hospital in Tirupati has been successfully performing TKR surgeries free of cost to the patients.

So far, they have performed about eight  surgeries and are looking for performing more. The government has provided a special fund of Rs.20 lakhs for the hospital to buy implants for TKR. Under this special fund, they have completed four surgeries in August 2018.

The hospital has 21 more implants at their disposal with which they can operate 20 persons but due to lack of awareness many people were not approaching the doctors here. “The point is people should know that we perform knee replacement surgeries in Ruia hospital free of cost which the private hospitals may charge about Rs.2 lakhs.

When this awareness comes to the people more patients can approach us for surgeries”, said the Professor and HoD of Orthopaedics Dr S Sreenivasa Reddy. Each implant costs about Rs.50-60 thousands which patients can get free with the special fund provided by the government, he said. 

Meanwhile, the government has allotted very less fund for TKR surgeries to Ruia hospital compared to other hospitals. While they allotted Rs.20 lakhs, only Rs.10 lakh was released so far. Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam government hospitals got Rs.75 lakhs and Kurnool hospital got Rs.38 lakhs.

However, Dr Sreenivasa Reddy said, “If we complete the surgeries we can request the government for more funds and that will be not a problem”. He said that they have made seven total hip replacement surgeries during the last two years. In August, four TKR surgeries were performed on SK Noorjahan from Nandikotkur, D Sarojamma from Kadapa, J Lakshmi Narayana from Kadapa and S Venkata Subba Reddy from Jammalamadugu.

Of them two patients were discharged a couple of days ago with the remaining two – Noorjahan and Venkata Subba  Reddy were discharged on Monday. The surgeries were made by a team led by him that includes Dr P Ravi Shankar, Dr R Venkat, Dr DL Venkatesh and Anaesthetist Dr Jamuna and others.