Latur grandmom gets Rs 19 lakh gift from KEM Hospital in Mumbai: A clip for her leaky heart valve
The mitral valve is one of the four that regulates the flow of blood through the heart. When it becomes diseased, the patient suffers from shortness of breath, fatigue, dry cough, and fainting spells, among other symptoms. Worse, the patient could develop heart failure or even a stroke.
"My grandparents live alone in interior Latur and couldn't manage with the symptoms," said Ravi Shinde (name changed on request). He brought his grandmother to KEM Hospital in Parel for a consultation and was pleasantly surprised to hear a surgery-free method was possible.
The device, a mitral clip, would help the valve close, prevent infections, and improve the quality of life.
You Can Also Check:
Mumbai AQI
|
Weather in Mumbai
|
Bank Holidays in Mumbai
|
Public Holidays in Mumbai
"This was done within 15 days of our arrival in Mumbai," Shinde said, adding his grandmother was now breathing normally in the ward. The family only paid Rs 2,500 for registration.
The 66-year-old patient suffered a heart attack a few months back and underwent angioplasty at a local hospital. "She initially improved but began experiencing breathlessness on exertion within a few months due to a leaking mitral valve—a known complication of heart attacks," said head of cardiology at KEM Hospital, Dr Ajay Mahajan, who performed the M-TEER (minimally invasive transcatheter edge-to-edge repair) on June 30.
Tradionally, an open heart surgery was done to fix leaking valve, but now minimally invasive method is used. The patient was initially advised surgery, but it was risky due to her age and comorbidities. In the minimally invasive method, a clip-like device was inserted via a catheter, avoiding the need for surgery, Dr Mahajan explained.
The KEM Hospital team got the made-in-India device for free as an inaugural offer by manufacturers Meril Life Sciences; the original American device costs around Rs 35 lakh. Senior cardiologist Dr Ashok Seth from Fortis Esco-rts Heart Institute in New Delhi, who conducted a clinical trial for the device, said it works well for those patients who can't withstand surgery.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
2 hours ago
- Indian Express
Israeli airstrikes kill 14 Palestinians in Gaza; 10 more killed seeking food
Israeli airstrikes killed 24 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including 10 as they sought food in the embattled enclave, hospital officials told the Associated Press on Saturday. Two American aid workers with the Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation were also injured in southern Gaza after unknown assailants threw grenades at them at a food distribution site, the organization said. The bloodshed comes as US-led ceasefire efforts aimed at halting a nearly 21-month war appear to be gaining momentum. Hamas gave a 'positive' response late Friday to the latest US proposal for a 60-day truce but said further talks were needed on implementation. Hamas has been seeking guarantees that the initial truce would lead to a total end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. President Donald Trump has been pushing for an agreement and is set to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House next week to discuss a deal. Israeli strikes kill Palestinians in southern Gaza The Israeli airstrikes struck tents in the Muwasi area on the southern end of Gaza's Mediterranean coast, killing seven people, including a Palestinian doctor and his three children, according to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Four others were killed in the Bani Suheila area of southern Gaza, and three people were killed in three different strikes in Khan Younis. The Israeli army did not provide immediate comment on the strikes. Meanwhile, eight Palestinians were killed near a GHF aid-distribution site in the southern city of Rafah, the hospital said. One Palestinian was also killed near another GHF point in Rafah. It was not clear how far away the Palestinians were from the sites. GHF denied the killings happened near their sites. Previously the organization has said no one has been shot at its sites, which are guarded by private contractors but can only be accessed by passing Israeli military positions hundreds of meters away. The army had no immediate comment, but has said it fires warning shots as a crowd-control measure and it only aims at people when its troops are threatened. One Palestinian was also killed waiting in crowds for aid trucks in eastern Khan Younis, officials at Nasser Hospital said. The UN and other international organizations bring in their own supplies of aid. It was unclear to which organization the aid trucks the Palestinians were waiting for belonged to, but the incident did not appear to be connected to GHF operations. Crowds of Palestinians often wait for trucks and unload or loot its contents before they reach their destinations. These trucks must pass through areas under Israeli military control. The Israeli military did not immediately comment about the incident. The GHF said the two American aid workers were injured on Saturday morning at a distribution site in Khan Younis. The assailants threw grenades at the aid workers, the statement said. GHF later posted a photo of the fragments of the explosive device and claimed, without providing evidence, that it was detonated by Hamas militants. It said the injuries were not life-threatening, and the two men are are receiving medical attention. The GHF distributes aid from four sites that are surrounded by Israeli troops, three of which are in the far south of Gaza. GHF is a US- and Israeli-backed initiative meant to bypass the UN Israel says Hamas has been siphoning off aid delivered by the UN a claim the UN denies. Hamas has urged Palestinians not to cooperate with the GHF. GHF is an American organization, registered in Delaware, that began distributing food to Palestinians in late May. Palestinians say Israeli troops open fire almost every day toward crowds on roads heading to the distribution points, through Israeli military zones. Several hundred people have been killed and hundreds more wounded, according to Gaza's Health Ministry and witnesses. The Gaza war was set off after Hamas attacked on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage. Israel reponded with an offensive that has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, displaced nearly all of Gaza's 2 million people and leaving many on the edge of famine. The ministry is led by medical professionals employed by Gaza's Hamas government. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but its figures are seen by the UN and other international organizations as the most reliable statistics on war casualties.
News18
5 hours ago
- News18
Medical Education Scam Busted: Godman, Ex-UGC Chief, Among 34 Officials Named
Last Updated: The alleged corruption spans multiple states, pointing to a nationwide racket involving approvals, inspections, and recognitions granted to several private medical colleges. In what it has called as one of the largest medical education scams in India, the Central Bureau of Education (CBI) has busted a nexus of top government officials, intermediaries and representatives of private medical colleges, who were allegedly involved in 'egregious" acts, including graft and manipulation of the regulatory framework governing medical colleges. The alleged corruption spans multiple states, pointing to a nationwide racket involving approvals, inspections, and recognitions granted to several private medical colleges. As per the agency, the corruption involves top officials from the union health ministry, the National Medical Commission (NMC), middlemen, private college representatives, prominent educationists, and even a self-styled godman, news agency PTI reported. High-Profile Names Under Scanner: The scam, unearthed by the Central Bureau of Investigation, has opened the lid on a number of deep links the officials had with each other. The agency named several high profile names in its FIR including, The central probe agency arrested eight people in the case recently. These include three doctors of the NMC team who were held for allegedly taking a bribe of Rs 55 lakh for giving a favourable report to the Naya Raipur-based Rawatpura Institute of Medical Sciences and Research. The agency has alleged that Ravi Shankar of the Rawatpura Institute wanted advance information about the inspection. A director of the institute, Atul Kumar Tiwari, also named in the FIR, got in touch with Raval to get the information unlawfully. Ravi Shankar also got in touch with DP Singh to get a favourable inspection report in lieu of bribes, the CBI alleged and added that Singh delegated the task to one Suresh. There was no immediate reaction from Singh. Raval had allegedly demanded Rs 25-30 lakh for the information and gave the names of assessors and the date of inspection to the institute officials. The syndicate has its roots in the Union Health Ministry, where the eight accused officials ran the sophisticated scheme facilitating unauthorised access, illegal duplication and dissemination of highly confidential files and sensitive information to representatives of medical colleges through a network of intermediaries in exchange for huge bribes, the FIR alleged. These officials, along with the intermediaries, manipulated the statutory inspection process conducted by the NMC by disclosing inspection schedules and identities of the designated assessors to the medical institutions concerned well in advance of the official communication. The CBI has named the Union Health Ministry's Poonam Meena, Dharamvir, Piyush Malyan, Anup Jaiswal, Rahul Srivastava, Deepak, Manisha and Chandan Kumar as accused in the FIR. These people allegedly located files and clicked photographs of notings and comments made by senior officers and sent these to middlemen and representatives of medical colleges. The crucial information of internal processing of medical institutions in the ministry gave an alarming degree of leverage to colleges. The agency has alleged that several middlemen and representatives of medical colleges, including Bhadoria, Joshy Mathew, Udit Narain, Virendra Kumar, and Manisha Joshi, were tapping accused Health Ministry officials for information on NMC assessments. All of them have been named in the FIR. 'Such prior disclosures have enabled medical colleges to orchestrate fraudulent arrangements, including the bribing of assessors to secure favourable inspection reports, the deployment of non-existent or proxy faculty (ghost faculty), and the admission of fictitious patients to artificially project compliance during inspections, and tampering with the biometric attendance systems to falsify," the FIR said. The CBI has alleged that Bhadoria was cloning artificial fingers to create a fake biometric attendance of doctors in the hospital. The agency has mentioned bribes running into lakhs of rupees being exchanged between NMC teams, intermediaries and representatives of medical colleges, being routed through hawala and used for multiple purposes, including the one in the name of construction of a temple. It has also alleged that Jeetu Lal Meena, a wholetime member of the Medical Assessment and Rating Board in NMC, was in touch with Indra Bali Mishra 'Guruji', a resident of Varanasi, who in turn was a pointsman for Virender Kumar, an alleged middlemen for a number of colleges in southern India. It is alleged that in lieu of information, Kumar gave bribes in lakhs to Guruji, who got it collected through his brother-in-law Shivam Pandey and got it handed to Meena. Meena allegedly used a portion of the bribe money in the construction of a temple in Rajasthan's Dausa. One Hari Prasad in Ananthpur, Andhra Pradesh, also worked through Kumar. Prasad, who arranged dummy faculty and handled NMC affairs for some medical colleges for a fee, had two more partners working for him, Krishna Kishore and Ankam Rambabu who had taken bribes from Venkat, a director of Gayatri Medical College, Visakhapatnam and Father Joseph Kommareddy of Father Colombo Institute of Medical Sciences in Warangal. About the Author Shobhit Gupta Shobhit Gupta is a sub-editor at and covers India and International news. He is interested in day to day political affairs in India and geopolitics. He earned his BA Journalism (Hons) degree from More Get breaking news, in-depth analysis, and expert perspectives on everything from politics to crime and society. Stay informed with the latest India news only on News18. Download the News18 App to stay updated! tags : cbi Location : Delhi, India, India First Published: July 05, 2025, 15:58 IST News india Medical Education Scam Busted: Godman, Ex-UGC Chief, Among 34 Officials Named
Indian Express
5 hours ago
- Indian Express
AI helps couple achieve pregnancy after 18 years of failed IVF cycles: Fertility expert explains how tech can make this happen
After 20 years, a couple in the US is expecting to be parents as the woman has achieved pregnancy after a series of unsuccessful attempts of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), where the eggs and sperm are fertilised outside the body in a laboratory and the resulting embryo is transferred into the woman's uterus. That was because the man had very low sperm. And even the little that was there was hidden and undetectable by an embryologist. But now thanks to an artificial intelligence system, previously undetectable sperm can not only be identified but harvested for use. The STAR (Sperm Tracking and Recovery) system, developed at Columbia University Fertility Centre in New York, is expected to help men with azoospermia, a condition where no sperm is easily found in the semen. This technology is a breakthrough because it can harvest hidden semen, has a non-invasive extraction method and can offer an option to men battling fertility issues. This method costs under $3,000 (Rs 2.6 lakh). 'This is an example where technology multiplies human efforts. Even embryologists currently do the same thing. But now AI can assist them in identifying the sperm even better,' says Dr Anjali Malpani, IVF specialist and founder of Malpani Infertility Clinic. A typical semen sample usually has millions of sperm. But some men have really low counts, so much so that they can't be seen even after centrifugation (spinning the semen sample to concentrate the sperm) and hours of meticulous searching under a microscope. This is different from ejaculatory duct disorders, which prevent sperm from being ejaculated despite being produced in healthy numbers in the testes, usually due to a blockage. Then we use a needle to extract the healthy sperm. Azoospermia is diagnosed when no sperm can be found in at least two separate semen samples analyzed after centrifugation. So we study multiple ejaculates, which means collecting and analyzing multiple semen samples to confirm the absence of sperm. We usually collect the samples in quick succession, within an hour or two. This is done because sperm production can fluctuate, and a single semen analysis might not accurately reflect the overall situation. Multiple samples help account for these variations. Then an embryologist studies them to see if they can be used for IVF or not. Now the semen sample is placed on a chip under a microscope. AI connects to the microscope through a high-speed camera and with high-powered imaging technology scans it. The STAR system takes more than 8 million images in under an hour to find what it has been trained to identify as a sperm cell. It can isolate sperm faster in the sample, allowing embryologists to recover cells that they could not have just with their eyes. So AI is amplifying the embryologist's vision. Of course, each IVF case has different complexities which require the experience of a trained embryologist. But in resource-scarce settings and in the absence of a good embryologist, AI can scan sperm and eggs based on the dataset of thousands of samples that have been fed into them. Still I would say that an embryologist can grade embryos — assessing the quality and developmental potential of embryos — better.
