INSIDE THE CHAOS AT PRISTYN CARE

Amita Panchal, a 47-year old Mumbai-based bank employee and a single mother, navigated life with the aid of crutches. Childhood polio had restricted her mobility. She had health issues associated with obesity and, in May this year, consulted a doctor through Pristyn Care, a Sequoia- and Tiger Global-backed start-up that offers elective surgeries.

- Ranjani Raghavan

A Pristyn Care sales executive first contacted her on 11 May with details of the procedure she would eventually undergo—insertion of an intragastric balloon made by US-based Allurion Technologies. The next day, the same sales executive sent her a doctor’s prescription on WhatsApp, which contained a recommendation by Dr Nelson V Junghare, a young general surgeon, proctologist and laparoscopic surgeon, that she go for bariatric therapy. The Body Mass Index of the patient, as noted in the prescription, was the minimum mandated by India’s insurance regulator for such a procedure to be covered by insurance. The treatment, which costs a little less than ₹4 lakh, involves the patient swallowing a pill, which inflates into a balloon once inside the stomach. This limits the amount of food a person can eat and forces a calorie deficit, resulting in weight loss.

On 20 May, Panchal was admitted to a hospital in Mumbai’s Goregaon suburb to undergo this procedure. Just about half an hour later, however, she felt pain and unease, started vomiting, and began asking the doctors to remove the capsule from her stomach, according to a family member who asked not to be named.

Initially, her doctor counselled her that the uneasiness and nausea is a normal reaction to the procedure. But Panchal’s situation continued to deteriorate over the next few days.