CHENNAI: A 32-year-old man who was admitted to a private hospital for a scheduled knee surgery, on Monday died on the operation table. The incident occurred moments after he was taken into the operation theatre. The relatives of the deceased, identified as Srivinod, an IT employee, even came to blows with the hospital staff and doctors over the death. The police intervened and the relatives left with the body after a compromise was reached. The doctors attending to Srivinod said that a major cause of his death was his heightened “anxiety, fear and “anaphylactic shock.”The incident came as a heavy shock to his wife, Kausalya, and brother who had been assured, before he entered the operation theatre, that he would walk out in an hour. When word spread among his kin, they began arriving at VS hospital on Spur Tank Road and a minor protest broke out.According to a close relative, Srivinod and Kausalya had gone to watch a movie on their second anniversary last Tuesday when he slipped on the theatre stairs and hurt his knee. “He was fine but the doctors said that he needed to undergo an arthroscopic ACL repair in the knee and scheduled the surgery for Monday,” he said.“My son-in-law walked into the hospital and suddenly... they rushed out of the theatre and said that he had died of a heart attack,” cried retired policeman Selvaraj. He alleged that Vinod had arrived at 6 am at the hospital and was pronounced dead by 8 am.His relatives claimed that he had no history of high pressure or sugar and as they began bombarding the hospital with questions, an explanation from the doctors that he died because of high blood pressure and blood sugar did little to quiten them down. “We had no choice but to call in the police from the Egmore Station,” said a hospital administrator. They also called in their legal team who attempted a compromise.Srivinod’s wife was seen in the corridors of the hospital wailing. With the hospital authorities reluctant to have a post-mortem examination done, there was an impasse. Finally after some time, they agreed not to press charges and took his body and left.When Express contacted Dr Sundar, who attended to the case, he explained that not only was Vinod obese, he was diagnosed with high blood pressure and “sugar over 200” after he was screened. “We had his sugar level lowered over three days here and only after he was cleared by the physician did we go for the surgery,” he said. After the spinal anaesthesia was administered, his fear palpitations escalated and he went into cardiac arrest, the doctor claimed.
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