Bone of contention!

A bone grafting surgery performed on 17-year-old slum dweller Ayesha Khanum at Lucknow's Balrampur hospital last week has become a bone of contention between hospital authorities and a good samaritan, Hasan Zubur, who got the girl admitted and has been pitching in with the cost of her treatment from his own pocket for over two months now. Ayesha was bleeding profusely from a festering wound on her right torso and crying desperately for help when she was found by the 27-year-old insurance advisor.She was admitted to Balrampur's orthopaedic department on February 20, but when her condition started deteriorating, the hospital's orthopaedic surgeon, Dr GK Saxena recommended bone-grafting surgery and asked Zubur to arrange for G-Bones (artificial bones), which he said would be used to fill in the gaps caused by a "post-spinal non-unious injury." "Dr Saxena told us that if we failed to arrange for the artificial bones, he will be left with no option but to extract some bones from Ayesha's waist and use them for grafting," recalls Zubur. Zubur borrowed time from her doctor and money from his friends. Twice the surgery was postponed but eventually Zubur was able to arrange enough funds to purchase five G-Bones for Rs 5,500 besides medicines, injections etc worth another Rs 10,000 as advised by Dr Saxena. "Since the G-Bones had been arranged, we were secure in the belief that there won't be any need to extract bones from Ayesha's body. Even Dr Saxena ruled out this possibility," recalls Zubur. Similar views are aired by the girl's mother Khanam Jahan, whose worst fears came true when her daughter was brought out writhing in pain. Closer examination revealed that she had undergone bone extraction surgery! Suspecting foul play, Zubur has lodged a formal complaint with the Balrampur Hospital superintendent wherein he has accused Dr Saxena of making money on the sly by making him buy expensive G-Bones and then not using them. On his part, Dr Saxena denies the charges and calls them unfounded. "Some decisions are taken on the operation table and this was one of them. G-Bones are used as scaffolds only; they don't have ostogeniosity. In order to help bones grow faster we mix artificial bones with calcaneum and this is precisely what we did in Ayesha's case," says Saxena, adding that he had performed the surgery only after he had discussed the case threadbare with leading orthopaedic surgeons, including Dr UK Jain. However, Zubur, Khanam Jahan or Ayesha don't buy this explanation. "Dr Saxena may claim that he took the decision on the operation table, but patients who have had similar experiences had forewarned us much in advance. It's just that we didn't believe them. But now we know better," says Ayesha. Meanwhile, Balrampur hospital superintendent PK Misra, an orthopaedic surgeon himself, has initiated a high-level inquiry. "The probe will be conducted by the hospital's chief medical superintendent, Dr Irshad Ali. We will also look into the circumstances in which the surgery was performed," he says . Let's now hope that the verdict is not fractured!