Marengo Asia Hospitals partners Werfen to bring unique transfusion free heart transplants technique to India

New Delhi: In a path breaking collaboration, Marengo Asia Healthcare is all set to bring one of the most advanced techniques of transfusion free heart transplant to India. The hospital group in a strategic partnership with Werfen, is poised to adopt the Goal Directed Bleeding Management (GDBM) solutions, reducing complications for the patients.

Complex cardiac surgical procedures necessitate the practice of transfusing blood to the patient but very often the transfusion can lead to adverse effects, including severe and long-lasting complications for the patient.

The most sustainable, cost-effective and evidence-based approach for minimalizing blood transfusion, and hence improving patients’ outcomes (such as decrease in the length of hospital stay), is to implement the principles and practices of Patient Blood Management (PBM), which is strongly recommended by WHO. The most crucial and clinically proven cornerstone of PBM is Goal-directed bleeding Management (GDBM). With proven accomplishment in Australia, US and Europe, adoption of GDBM ensures reduction in blood usage up to 90%, ICU length of stay by 25%, complications like infections or kidney damage by 70% providing more efficiency to doctors and time for patient management with an overall improvement in patient outcomes.

The collaboration was signed on by Dr Raajiv Singhal, Managing Director & Group CEO, Marengo Asia Hospitals and Anurag Mishra, Regional Director- India and South Asia, Werfen. Other members to join Dr Singhal were Dr Keyur Parikh, Chairman – Marengo CIMS Hospital, Dr Dhiren Shah, Director – Heart & Lung Transplant Program, and Dr Ajay Gandhi, Associate Director- Clinical Affairs, Werfen India. Dr Klaus Goerlinger, Sr Consultant for anaesthesiology, emergency & intensive care medicine and globally renowned for hemostaseology, will be leading the program for implementation of the protocols. Dr. Goerlinger was associated with University Essen hospital, Germany for around 3 decades. He is currently the global Medical Director – PBM for Werfen.

Dr Raajiv Singhal, Managing Director & Group CEO, Marengo Asia Hospitals says, “With 38 heart transplants conducted, we are taking this higher to as a center of excellence for transfusion free heart transplants. With a recognition as a preferred destination for our clinical excellence in heart transplants, we are committed to bringing optimized treatment solutions to our patients with a focus on ‘Patient First’.  Through a strategic collaboration with Werfen, we will pioneer in bringing transfusion free heart transplants for the first time in the India and South Asia region. This will enhance the optimized clinical outcomes and bring a new definition to patient experience and service deliveries. We hope that this will be a game changer in creating benchmarks in the healthcare industry.”

Dr. Ajay Gandhi, Associate Director- Clinical Affairs, Werfen India, says, “Patient Blood Management is a compelling need for the healthcare ecosystem, particularly in the developing economies, where anemia is common, and blood continues to remain a scarce resource. The clinical and administrative leadership of CIMS has displayed their commitment to ensure adoption of WHO recommended best practices towards patient safety in the settings of peri-operative bleeding. Werfen India and its Clinical team is committed to complement and enhance their knowledge and skill set to accomplish Goal Directed Bleeding Management protocols across all the establishments of Marengo Asia group.”

Marengo Asia Healthcare group of hospitals will also adopt the unique and innovative solution “GEMWeb Live”, a real-time onscreen dashboard of diagnostic assays and graphs for cardiac surgical procedures. Our flagship hospital, Marengo CIMS Hospital, Ahmedabad will become the first Indian corporate hospital to be equipped with such a feature. With the patient’s safety and better outcomes as our core objective and the admixture of clinical competence and optimal usage of diagnostic and management-guiding devices in evaluation of coagulopathic bleeding.

The Marengo Asia-Werfen partnership will play a crucial role in the development of “Centre of Excellence”. MCIMS adopts, at the essence of its heart transplant and cardiothoracic vascular surgical segment, GDBM through state-of-art health-technology and protocol driven clinical practices and we will be the first institution in South Asia to do so.

The number of heart transplants in India has reached an exponential level making India the foremost referral center for heart transplants in South Asia. India had recorded a mere 53 heart transplants in 2014 and have recorded 241 in 2018. In four years span the Programme of heart transplants has yielded much success. The advent of transportation of a donor’s heart through the ‘Green Corridor’ has been prioritized to set new record timing in transporting the heart to the recipient to accomplish better outcomes.