All Chest Pain is not Angina (because of a blockage to the blood supply of the heart) and all Breathlessness is not Bronchial Asthma.”
- Chest Pain,
- Breathlessness,
- Chronic Cough,
- Chronic Expectoration,
- Coughing of Blood,
- Difficulty in Swallowing,
- Hoarseness of Voice, et cetera, are just symptoms of chest diseases.
These can be caused by disease in any organ in the chest of which the heart is not the only one. These diseases may range from Hyperacidity to Cancer, from a Common Cold to Tuberculosis. Thus they cannot be ignored. If these symptoms persist, then they have to be thoroughly assessed and treated. After all, “A Stitch in Time;Saves Nine.”
There are the two lungs, its covering envelope – the pleura, the wind-pipe and its branches, the food-pipe, the heart with its containing bag – the pericardium placed in a a fold called as mediastinum and one cannot forget the chest wall with the ribs and enveloping muscles and much more.
The Heart, at best is responsible for 5 percent of cases of chest pain. It is not that only the Heart can be a killer, diseases principally cancer of the other organs in the chest can be very dangerous “Silent Killers”. Silent because cancer is painless to begin with and therefore can be missed in its early course.
I, in my practice as a Cardiovascular and Chest Surgeon, have had the unhappiness of seeing patients late in the disease process. Diseases, which were very easily treatable in its initial stages; having to undergo major surgical procedures at their delayed presentation or cases where I could barely offer them anything because of their advanced stages of disease.
“Early treatments give the best results and require very simple endoscopic treatments. The recovery of the patient is prompt, but a prompt recovery needs a prompt diagnosis.”
The causes of the delayed or late presentations are many, but are mostly concerns about availability and affordability of treatments. It is to remove these concerns that there was a need to ensure that people especially those who are financially compromised could have access first and foremost to an early superspecialist consultation and then proceed with the required treatment at a cost-effective price.
Our focus is the liberal use of minimally invasive surgical and anesthetic techniques. This leads to a more comfortable and rapid recovery.