At a meeting with doctors on Tuesday, Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah described the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) as a world class medical institution. Presiding over a meeting of the NICVD's governing body at the Chief Minister's House, he said that the main building of the institute is 50 years old and his government was trying to spare funds to reconstruct it for creation of more space.
During the last 30 months the institute performed 9,058 primary angioplasties. The NICVD's executive director Dr Nadeem Qamar said the primary angioplasty was started in May 2015. He told the meeting that cardiac surgeries have risen to nearly 200 per month and "we expect to carry on the trend with targeting approximately 3,000 surgeries per year." The surgical ICU has been expanded from 20 to 34 beds. Dr Qamar said 39 fellows have passed their ECPs examination in cardiology and 37 have received diplomas in cardiology.
He added that four chest pain units have been made functional. The NICVD in Larkana has become operational, he added. All general patient and outpatient services are totally free of cost at the NICVD. The free services include angiography, angioplasty, bypass and open-heart surgery, ECG, echocardiography, emergency services, ETT, ICU, critical care unit, laboratory, life-saving devices (ICD and CRT-P)/D), medicines, outpatient services, pacemakers, primary PCI (heart attack during angioplasty), stress echocardiography, TEE, thallium and x-rays.
The NICVD has recently started a programme for replacing pacemakers (TPM/PPM) free of cost. These procedures cost Rs 4,000, Rs 80,000 to Rs 135,000 for TPM and PPM, respectively. It has also started, free of cost, a programme for placing life-saving devices (ICD/CRT-P/D).
He said that the NICVD has established satellite centres at the Civil Hospital in Larkana. Satellite centres at Tando Mohammad Khan, Sukkur, Khairpur, Nawabshah, Mirpurkhas and Hyderabad will be made functional in the next few months. After the meeting a signing ceremony to establish the NICVD's satellite centre at Syed Abdullah Shah institute of health Sciences (SASIHS) was signed.