The Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, has launched India's first amputee clinic, Director Jagat Ram said on Tuesday. The clinic has been set up to improve amputation patient care by providing collection of services under one roof and with significant coordination.

Orthopaedics Department Head, M.S. Dhillon, who spearheaded the initiative, said: "This is the first-of-its-kind clinic in the country and no such clinic exists elsewhere. Over the last few years, it has been our endeavour to provide comprehensive care to post-trauma amputees, with various aspects of multidisciplinary care.

"We have combined all the specialities that help in patient care and rehab under one roof, we have now formalized this as PGI amputee clinic comprising specialists from various departments that is, orthopaedics, PMR (physical and medical rehabilitation), occupational physiotherapy, prosthetists, psychologists and nursing departments, who had already been providing care but as individual entities."

It is a concept to provide holistic care to patients with amputation, Dhillon added.

It involves evaluation, resuscitation and treatment after the initial event (usually trauma), followed by appropriate planning and surgical interventions.

"We will also run amputee schools on the basis of the successful knee school being run at PGI where we propose to get amputees together to interact with each other and get collective counselling and understand issues faced by other similar cases," Dhillon said.

(IANS)