Man from US gets shoulder fixed in Chennai,India

The injured shoulder of an American citizen was fixed by a key-hole surgery in a private hospital in the city recently. Mr Dave Bryce Hurd, a civil construction engineer from North Carolina, had injured his shoulder 20 years ago while rowing a boat and sustained a injury again while mowing a lawn this year.

Unable to afford the surgery and at the same time unwilling to tolerate the pain, he flew down to Chennai to be operated at Venkataeswara Hospital. He underwent a shoulder arthroscopy and rotatorcuff surgery early this week to rectify his problem. Speaking to reporters in the city on Friday, Dr A.K. Venkatachalam, consultant orthopaedic surgeon of the hospital claimed this was the first time an American had undergone a similar surgery in Chennai.

As soon as he was told that the surgery would cost US $ 20, 000 (Rs 10 lakh), Mr Hurd started looking for an alternative solution and located the Doctor on the internet. Soon after he arrived at Chennai, the doctor detected that he had a full thickness rotator cuff tear, through a shoulder arthroscopy.
It was repaired using suture anchors and sutures.
Says Mr Dave Hurd three months after his operation from his house in North Carolina, "Hello, Dr. Venkatachalam, You are correct as usual. I am almost 100% in my range of motion. The only place I am lacking a little bit is behind my back reaching up my spine. But my physical therapist is truly amazed at my rate of recovery. I've actually been working with a resistance band ( the lightest one ) for about 3 weeks. I 'm only doing shoulder and below, nothing overhead. I don't increase the resistance band, but just increase the repetitions as my strength has began to return.
Someone asked me last Friday if I would go to India if I needed some other type of orthopedic surgery. I told them, "yes, I wouldn't hesitate to go back". I feel the procedure was done on parallel with any hospital in the U.S. , and the level of personal care was much higher than you would receive over here.

Early this year, a British mountaineer, Mark Carr, underwent a surgery to decompress his tendons and remove bony overgrowth from arthritis of his collarbone joint, Dr Venkatachalam told reporters. With his left hand in a sling, the patient said he spent just Rs 95, 000 while he had spent almost Rs 10 lakh for a similar surgery on his right hand in the US some years ago.

Cost factor, personalised care, world class treatment were factors responsible for increasing visits of foreign medical tourists to India. The patient paid only Rs 95,000 for the surgery now as against nearly Rs 10 lakhs (USD 20,000), he would have paid in the United States.”

He claimed his hospital was the only one in the country where the very first ‘high flexion knee replacement’ surgery was done in September this year on a doctor from Lucknow. Dave Hurd, with his left hand in a sling, said he had spent nearly USD20,000 for a similar surgery on his right hand in the US some years ago.”Now, I had to shell out only one-tenth of the money I would have spent for similar surgery in my country.