Darpan News Service
Chandigarh, 10 September: The Department of Hematology and the Department of Clinical Hematology & Medical Oncology at PGIMER, Chandigarh organized the Annual Conference of the North-West Chapter of the Indian Society of Hematology and Blood Transfusion on September 10, 2022. The meeting was attended by over 250 delegates from across the states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and others from Rajasthan, New Delhi, and Jammu.
The event marked the successful completion of one-year of the new Department of Clinical Hematology and Medical Oncology at PGI, which caters to a large load of cancer patients as well as those suffering from benign blood diseases in the region. Prof. Pankaj Malhotra, the Head of the CHMO department, said that he was proud to note that specialist services were now available in the most premier institute of the region, and that oncology patients did not have to run from pillar to post, or travel long distance distances to get high-quality healthcare.
In the meeting, Dr. M. Joseph John from CMC Ludhiana highlighted “near-miss” events that were avoided, and how learning from them is the key to making patient care safer and more effective. Dr. Rishi Dhawan from AIIMS, New Delhi talked about care of a very common childhood cancer, A.L.L., and how to ensure that nearly 80-90% of children with this dreaded disease can be cured. New techniques of diagnosis were discussed: sequencing by Dr. Neeraj Arora from Ahmedabad, and flow cytometry by Dr. Kunal Sehgal from Mumbai. Dr. Shaji RV from CMC Vellore and Dr. Ganesh Kumar from AIIMS, New Delhi talked about the diagnosis of bone marrow failure and hemolytic anemias respectively. Each of the talks was followed by a presentation of examples of patients with these blood diseases by PGI faculty.
At the end of the meeting, Dr. Reena Das, Head of the Department of Hematology, told the gathering how this annual conference was part of the efforts of PGIMER to revive the tradition of knowledge sharing and expertise development in medical institutions of the North-West region of India. Dr. Sreejesh from the same department expressed the hope that collaborative work will speed up the path to enhanced patient care and development of newer and better technologies to diagnose and manage these serious and common blood illnesses.