Greed and negligence was the experience at ZOI! August 2017, my elderly father visited Zoi Hospital for knee pain. Two health supplements were prescribed and he was sent to the hospital’s physiotherapist for electromagnetic therapy and knee strengthening exercises. This continued for 3 weeks but the knee pain became worse.
Two weeks later, he visited Dr. Ramesh. The Synovial fluid was syringed out and sent for analysis. A steroid injection was also given. The synovial fluid cell count showed 75 lymphocytes as against the normal count of 20 - 45. No further investigation was carried out to find out what caused the high count of lymphocytes. The doctor continued to prescribe health supplements and electromagnetic therapy.
The knee pain worsened and in October, the same treatment was prescribed again. Dr. Ramesh suggested giving an injection costing Rs. 15, 000 to reduce the pain. By the end of October, my father had severe neck pain and the cervical x ray showed severe spondylosis. It is surprising that the continued aches and pain were not adequate for the doctor at Zoi to consider infection in the bone.
We had no option but move to another hospital to discover that there was infection in the blood(ESR was extremely high.) MRI of the neck showed infection of the neck vertebrae. My father was treated for TB of the spine. Soon thereafter Dad had to undergo a major surgery to stabilize the crumbling neck vertebrae. The surgeon indicated in his report that the infection had come from the knee.
To think that all of this could have been avoided had the doctors at Zoi put patient health before their greed.