Delhi hospital claims it successfully cured coronavirus patient using plasma therapy
The patient was administered fresh plasma as a treatment modality as a side-line to standard treatment protocols on the night of April 14, the hospital said in a statement.
A private hospital in the Delhi-NCR region on Monday claimed that a coronavirus patient, who was administered plasma therapy for the first time in the facility, was discharged on Sunday after being completely cured.
The 49-year-old man had tested positive for COVID-19 on April 4 and was admitted to Max Hospital, Saket, it said in a statement.
As his condition deteriorated, he was put on ventilator support on April 8, the hospital added.
When the patient showed no signs of improvement, his family requested for the administration of plasma therapy on compassionate grounds, it said, adding that the family arranged a donor for extracting plasma.
The patient was administered fresh plasma as a treatment modality as a side-line to standard treatment protocols on the night of April 14, the statement said.
Subsequently, the patient showed improvement and by the fourth day, was weaned off ventilator support and continued on supplementary oxygen. He was shifted to a room with round-the-clock monitoring on Monday after testing negative twice within 24 hours, it said.
He has now fully recovered and was discharged, the hospital said, adding that he will stay at home for another two weeks.
Group Medical Director of Max Healthcare and Senior Director of the Institute of Internal Medicine Dr Sandeep Budhiraja said, "We can say that plasma therapy could have worked as a catalyst in speeding up his recovery. We cannot attribute 100 percent recovery to plasma therapy only, as there are multiple factors which carved his path to recovery."
Other states have also started plasma therapy to treat COVID-19 patients.
A 58-year-old doctor became the first coronavirus patient at the King George Medical University (KGMU) in Lucknow to receive plasma therapy as an experimental treatment for the disease, a hospital official said.
The doctor from Orai in Uttar Pradesh was administered the plasma donated by a woman doctor from Canada who was the first COVID-19 patient admitted to the KGMU and later recovered, Dr Tulika Chandra of the hospital's blood transfusion medicine department said.
After King George's Medical University, another state-run hospital in Lucknow also has plans to start plasma therapy for treating COVID-19 patients.
The Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute for Medical Sciences (SGPGI) will start plasma therapy with the cooperation of ICMR. A special team of doctors has been constituted for this purpose. We are waiting for a green signal from the ICMR, SGPGI Director Professor R K Dhiman said.
A private hospital in Madhya Pradesh's Indore city has also started plasma therapy trials on three coronavirus patients, who are in serious condition, an official said.
Two doctors, who recovered from COVID-19 after treatment, came forward to donate their plasma (a component of blood) for these patients, Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences (SAIMS) chest disease Department Head Dr Ravi Dosi said.
Indore has emerged as a coronavirus hotspot in the state. The district has so far reported 1,207 COVID-19 cases and 60 deaths.
Edited by Suman Singh