Infrastructure

Scanners and imaging

A CT scan and an X-ray use radiation. An MRI and an ultrasound do not.

• 3T MRI. A 3 Tesla scanner, the field strength a doctor means by 3T. Used for the brain, spine, joints and soft tissue, and it can image the kidney and leg arteries without injecting contrast dye, which matters when the kidneys are already weak. The bore is 70 cm across and lit inside, so larger patients and people who dislike enclosed spaces can usually be scanned.
• 128-slice CT. A dual-energy spectral CT. It takes cross-sections of the head, chest, abdomen or heart in a few minutes, and reading the tissue at two energies lets the radiologist tell structures apart using less contrast dye. This is the scanner used for stroke imaging, CT angiography and cancer staging.
• Ultrasound suite. Two ultrasound rooms and a mobile machine that can be brought to a bed, with colour Doppler and 3D and 4D imaging. It uses sound rather than radiation and usually takes 15 to 20 minutes: the scan used in pregnancy, and for the abdomen, pelvis, thyroid, breast and the blood flow in the legs and neck.
• Digital X-ray, 3D mammography and DEXA. On the same floor, with no page of their own. Mammography here images the breast in slices as well as flat; DEXA measures bone density, the test used for osteoporosis.
• Radiology describes how a scan is ordered and reported, and investigations what happens between the consultation and the report.

Operating theatres

• Integrated OT suites. Eleven modular theatres, one minor theatre and seven procedure rooms. Integrated means the cameras, lights and surgical equipment are driven from one console rather than wheeled around the table, so the surgeon watches the operating field on large screens. The theatres run laminar air flow with HEPA filters, the usual way of keeping theatre air clean to lower the risk of infection after surgery.
• A post-anaesthesia care unit, where you wake up before going back to the ward, and a sterile supply unit beside the transplant theatres, so instruments are sterilised in the same complex they are used in.
• Surgical services covers the day of an operation.

Cardiac catheterisation

• Ceiling-mounted cath lab. Two catheterisation labs, one ceiling-mounted. A cath lab is an X-ray room where a cardiologist passes a fine tube through an artery at the wrist or groin to photograph the heart's arteries and, in the same sitting, open a blocked one with a balloon and a stent. Ceiling-mounted means the imaging arm hangs from above and swings over the whole body, so the patient does not have to be moved between views. The same room is used for the arteries of the neck, kidneys and limbs.
• Cardiology lists what the team does, and vascular imaging the vessel studies.

Intensive care

• SMART ICUs. 140 of the hospital's 350 beds are intensive care beds, in separate units for medical, surgical, cardiac, cardiothoracic, transplant and newborn patients, each with a step-down unit for the stage between intensive care and the ward. SMART is the hospital's name for the monitoring: several vital signs are read together at the bedside and again at a central nursing station, so a change is seen by someone who is not in the room.
• The medical and transplant units have single-patient cabins; the other units have isolation rooms.
• Intensive care services describes each unit and who works in it.

What is not here

There is no PET-CT scanner at this hospital. If your doctor has asked for a PET-CT, it will have to be done elsewhere.

There is no radiation therapy on site: no linear accelerator and no brachytherapy. Cancer surgery, chemotherapy and cancer imaging are done here; radiation treatment is not.

If a scan or a treatment you have been told to have is not named on this page, ring the hospital on +91 40 4699 9999 and ask before you travel.

Accreditation

The hospital holds NABH accreditation, its laboratory holds NABL accreditation, and it is recognised by the National Board of Examinations for DNB postgraduate training. Every published number, with its source, is on the facts page; about us describes the hospital as a whole.