PM home, to be back to work in 3 weeks

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to work from home in a week and would be going to office in another two weeks. The prime minister, who was discharged today, has been clocking a rapid rate of recovery which is being attributed as much to his personal health as much to the beating heart surgery he underwent.

Beating heart surgery, as opposed to a heart surgery using a heart-lung machine, helps a patient recover faster.

Srinath Reddy, the cardiologist attached to the PM, said the beating heart surgery process has definitely helped faster recovery.

In a major surgery of the kind that the PM underwent, which required fixing of grafts in five places inside the heart and lasting as many as 11 hours, the patient takes at least six weeks to become normal, says Reddy. But in the case of the PM, the beating heart method would reduce the recovery period by at least two weeks. So he can certainly be ready to work in four weeks including the period he has spent in the hospital, Reddy says.

The beating heart surgery is done while keeping the heart beating and allowing it to continue pumping blood, while in the other form of surgery, the heart is inactivated and the pumping of blood is artificially done through a heart lung machine.

In a normal bypass surgery, when the heart actually stops during the operation, there is more injury to the membranes and more impact on the brain function. Therefore, it needs longer recovery time, said Reddy, who has been a cardiologist with AIIMS and a full time public health and anti-tobacco activist. The prime minister’s surgery was the first beating heart surgery in AIIMS.

Earlier in the morning , Health Minister A Ramadoss said that the rate at which the Prime Miister was recovering, he is most likely to go to office in three weeks and would be working from home in the meanwhile. “His recovery would be faster once he is home,” the minister said.

The PM left for home at 7.50 am today, accompanied by his wife Gursharan Kaur and a few doctors. A team of doctors led by Srinath Reddy would remain attached to him at his residence where he will receive the same attention and care he was receiving at AIIMS.

RK Panda, the surgeon from the Asian Heart Institute, Mumbai, would remain in Delhi to monitor the health of the Prime Minister for two more days after which he would leave, Ramadoss said.

The PM underwent the redo coronary artery bypass surgery on January 24 after being admitted a day earlier. The surgery was done 18 years after he first underwent bypass surgery in 1990.