Saturday Interview | 'Neurological care is neglected'

Published date14 August 2021
AuthorDipankar Chakraborty
Publication titleStatesman, The (India)
An articulate medical expert with a heart of gold, Dr Srinivasan passionately advocates the cause of providing high-quality affordable healthcare to common people. He has performed over 8,000 major brain and spine surgeries since he began his career in the 1990s.

In an interview with DIPANKAR CHAKRABORTY, he candidly shares his thoughts on a wide range of issues related to neurological care in the country.

Excerpts:

Q. How would you explain your expertise as a specialist 'stereotactic and functional neurosurgeon' to a layman?

A. During my training as a neurosurgeon at main Manipal Hospital between 1994 and 2000, suffering and disability of patients made me think. I experienced three compelling stories that inspired me to do what I am doing today – neuro-rehabilitation and stereotactic surgery…After (these experiences) when I started investigating, subjects like rehabilitation and how to reconnect the brain circuits came before me.

I started studying patients as they fell sick and as they recovered. With further reading, I found I needed to do sub-specialisation on stereotactic and functional neurosurgery to deal with people with Parkinson's disease, with tremor in hands, spastics, pain and psychiatric epilepsy.

I am one of the few neurosurgeons who have moved from saving people's lives to improving their quality of life by dealing with brain circuits and making them better.

Q. What is stereotactic surgery?

A. I have to catch circuits in the brain through a hole drilled through the skull. These circuits are very deep seated which MRIs don't show many times. And I can't be opening and going in; that can damage the brain.

Stereotactic is a Greek word. How can I find a place deep inside my brain which I can't see? It is a technique to enter deep inside the brain without harming the superficial areas of the brain to rectify the physical problems. I learnt this technique during my six months stereotactic radiosurgery course at TWMU (Tokyo Women's Medical University) under the guidance of my guru Prof Takaomi Taira in 2015.

It is God's work I am doing. For Parkinson's disease, a pace-maker is put in the brain. The pacemaker costs Rs 8-10 lakhs. Include the cost of surgery etc. — it all comes to Rs 14-15 lakhs. How many people with middle class income in India can afford this kind of money? So I had to find lower cost treatment for my countrymen who can't afford this.

Prof Taira was burning circuits in the brain which is one-fifth of the cost with the same...

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