Wrong for adult cardiologists to treat pediatric patients, say

When 11-year-old Joydeb Rishi was diagnosed of a heart ailment, he was referred to an adult cardiologist by doctors. It was only a year after that his parents realised that what their son required was a pediatric cardiologist.

In the absence of awareness on the existence of the super-specialised doctors, hundreds of children across the country are wrongly taken to adult cardiologists, say experts. Finding a pediatric cardiologist isn't easy either, especially in smaller cities and towns.

Dr Subhendu Mandal, head of the department of pediatric cardiology at BM Birla Heart Research Centre in Kolkata, says there are only around a hundred such pediatric cardiologists like him all over India where 600 children are born each day with a heart disease.
 

"Adult cardiologists are just not trained nor equipped to handle children. They don't know the subject. I feel like a rare species myself as there are so little trained pediatric cardiologists," says Dr Mandal who did a two-year fellowship in pediatric cardiology from UK.

India's top cardiac surgeon Dr Devi Shetty agrees with him saying the difference between adult cardiology and pediatric cardiology is that of repairing a wall clock and a wrist watch.

"Pediatric cardiology requires a greater set of skills. This is what differentiates the men from the boys. But it's unfortunate that there are so little number of pediatric cardiologists in India," says Dr Shetty who runs the multi-specialty Narayana Health hospital chain.