INDIA'S BEST HOSPITALS. THROUGH THE EYES OF THE PATIENT.

There is no better metric than patient experience to judge a hospital. For, it offers a peek into everything, from doctors and nurses who walk the extra mile to provide timely cure and care to technology that is redefining treatments

- BY POOJA BIRAIA

Earlier this year, doctors in a small Assam hospital fought the clock for 75 minutes and won.

Hotelier Sanjay Poddar, 59, collapsed inside Dibrugarh's Apeksha Hospital after suffering an acute myocardial infarction—medical parlance for a massive heart attack. Before doctors could wheel him in for an angiogram, his heart stopped altogether. “The heart had gone into an absolute standstill,” recalls Dr Raja Roy, the intensivist on duty. “We started chest compressions—full CPR with ventilation—and revived him after about eight minutes. But he went into arrest again, and again. Each time we brought him back, the heart would stop.”

Resuscitation is rarely continued beyond 30 minutes, as the chances of meaningful recovery are “very remote”. In the waiting area, Poddar’s son Shubham, 31, watched the clock stretch into eternity. “His pulse was only there when they were pressing his chest; the moment they stopped, it flattened,” he recalls.

Yet the Apeksha team refused to stop. “My back was already pushed to the wall,” says Roy. “We had nothing to lose. The arrest was happening right in front of us—a witnessed arrest—which statistically gives a slightly better prognosis.” The team then did what was almost unheard of, especially in small-town hospitals—open the blocked artery, even with ongoing compressions.

Roy calls it a defining moment in his career. “Medicine is not just protocol; it is judgment and persistence,” he says. “When a team believes there is still a rhythm to find—even faint—you try. That's what care means.”

When the team opened Poddar's heart, what they found astonished them: the main coronary artery was 100 per cent blocked. As soon as the stent went in, the monitor began to beep with a steady rhythm. After 75 minutes of continuous CPR, Poddar’s heart was beating again.