AIIMS-Patna restores emergency services after one year

Trauma and emergency services were closed for the general public since July 12, 2020, after the state government declared the institute a dedicated Covid-19 hospital on July 10 last year.

Trauma and emergency services resumed on Monday after over a year at Patna’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

OPD at Patna AIIMS (HT File)

“As many as 64 patients were examined, of which 24 were admitted, since its reopening after over 13 months on Monday,” said Dr Anil Kumar, additional professor of surgery and head, trauma and emergency department, AIIMS-Patna.

Trauma and emergency services were closed for the general public since July 12, 2020, after the state government declared the institute a dedicated Covid-19 hospital on July 10 last year, he added.

The institute had to redeploy its manpower and resources to cope with the once burgeoning Covid patient load. It had to suspend many services, including trauma and emergency, outpatient department (OPD) consultation, elective surgeries and admission of non-Covid cases, said officials at the institute. All hospital services have, however, been restored gradually from December 28, last year. Trauma and emergency services are the last among them to be restored now.

“We restored our trauma and emergency services from Monday as the number of Covid-19 patients seeking admission at our institute has come down,” said Dr Prabhat Kumar Singh, director, AIIMS-Patna.

The AIIMS had only one patient admitted in its Covid-19 ward as on date. There were no new admissions in the Covid ward between August 13 and 19.

“We have reduced the number of beds in our Covid ward to 30 while deciding to restore all our services. We restored full OPD services around a month back. As many as 16 operation theatres (OTs) of the available 28 are now functional. Of them, two OTs are dedicated for trauma and emergency,” said Dr Singh.

The trauma and emergency department at AIIMS accords priority to the admission of acute trauma cases instead of those transferred from other hospitals and nursing homes.

“Given the limited number of beds — there are 60 beds in the trauma and emergency wing — we give priority to acute trauma cases instead of transferred cases from other health facilities. In case of referrals, we expect to have proper communication with the health facility referring its patient to us before they actually send them,” said Dr Kumar.

He said the trauma and emergency wing had proactively treated non-Covid cases of hospital staff, their relatives and those brought by the police with gunshot injury or road traffic accident during the 11-month closure period.

As many as 5,115 patients were reported to the AIIMS trauma and emergency wing between April 1, 2020, and March 31 this year, added Dr Kumar.

The Bihar government had declared AIIMS a centre of excellence for the management of Covid-19 in the state last year.

The AIIMS extended treatment to over 5,700 Covid-19 patients, of which around 1,300 succumbed to the virus.

.