HYDERABAD: Telangana State Medical Council (TSMC) has summoned doctors involved in the controversial height gain surgery performed on 23-year old techie Nikhil Reddy at Global Hospitals. The TSMC has issued a notice asking the doctors to appear before its ethics committee on April 20, to explain their stand on what they called an “unusual experimental surgery on a young person.”
It is reported that the council was forced to take up the case after different members of the medical fraternity raised ethical issues asking why the team led by G Chandra Bhushan, the chief orthopaedic surgeon, agreed to add three inches to Nikhil Reddy's existing height of 5 feet 7 inch. “Those who performed the surgery on Nikhil Reddy have been asked to appear before the ethics committee of TSMC to explain why he was selected for the limb-lengthening technique in the first place as there seems to no such emergency in the case. 5'7'' is not short stature,” said Dr E Ravindra Reddy, TSMC chairman. For the surgery worth Rs 700,000, Nikhil paid Rs 300,000 and made his friend give consent for the procedure.
Ilizarov technique is a medically proven limb-lengthening technique, Dr Reddy from OASIS said that it was mostly performed in cases where pathological reasons are found such as when one leg being shorter than other or on a polio-afflicted patient facing mobility issues or someone who has met with an accident with multiple fractures. Dr K Ramesh Reddy, Medical Council of India member, sought to classify the Nikhil Reddy case as a classic example of throwing ethics to wind.
