Sleeping doctors, blind diagnosis

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: “The doctor said I had chocolate cyst and I won’t conceive. She suggested an immediate surgery to remove an ovary. I became tense as my marriage was just two months away and a diagnosis for a gynaecological surgery at that juncture came as a rude shock,” Bhavana shudders as she recalled her brush with a very famous infertility specialist in Kochi a good 11 years ago.She had gone to the clinic as part of a TV crew and got the scanning done as a demonstration for TV camera.  A harried Bhavana took a second opinion here. “My relief when I was told that I had a common condition cannot be put in words,” says Bhavana, now a happy mother of an 8-year-old boy.Another very busy doctor in Kottayam district is known for his odd manner in which he arrives at a diagnosis. He sleeps during daytime and works at night. Jeevan, an NRI, met the doctor when his wife Anju had three miscarriages. The doctor advised a varicocelectomy for Jeevan as the first step to Anju conceiving a child. They were given a choice. The first grade surgery cost Rs 47,000, the second Rs 25,000 and the third only Rs15,000; the difference was in the quality of equipment used. Jeevan went in for first-quality surgery. The stay made him lighter by `70,000 and gifted him hydrocele, a side-effect which he carries even today, a good 18 months after the surgery.But the real shock came later. The list of prescribed medicines had a controversial capsule, a known herbal aphrodisiac, and an oil, also of dubious repute. When Jeevan met a urologist to treat his hydrocele, the doctor wondered how varicocele was diagnosed as the reason for the infertility when his wife became pregnant thrice.Jeevan soon rushed to other infertility specialists and they too echoed the same opinion.“Varicocele is found in 40 per cent of men with normal semen count. It should not be a reason for infertility. Varicocelectomy is advisable only in such conditions where there is no other option,” says Dr T V Sharavana Kumar, a infertility specialist here.‘But that does not stop many such specialists from suggesting this surgery to unsuspecting patients. And they charge hefty sums for a surgery that is normally done free of cost in government hospitals.During the investigation for this survey, we came across many couples who were suggested in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in the very first stage which costs anywhere between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 3 lakh in clinics. And they rush into a treatment regime, which sober medical practitioners recommend only at a later stage.But then, they are fodder to a growing branch of medical treatment that looks at startling ways to break the no-child deadlock.