New Delhi, Jan. 3: A doctors' network today asked the government's medical price control agency to cap the profit margins for coronary stents at 20 per cent, expressing concerns about what the network says are "huge profits" in the device industry's supply chain.

The Alliance of Doctors for Ethical Care has also told the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) to calculate the actual cost of manufacture of stents - devices used to treat patients with heart disease - in regulating their prices.

Members of the alliance who met senior officials in the NPPA said they also want the government to take steps to ensure that hospitals provide patients adequate choice of stents with "full scientific explanation" and display prices transparently.

"There is enormous scope to bring down the prices of stents," said Arun Mitra, a physician and former chair of the Punjab Medical Council's ethics committee, who attended the meeting. "Sections of the device supply chain have been making huge profits - there is evidence for this," Mitra told The Telegraph.

India's market for stents, primarily used in angioplasty procedures to treat survivors of heart attacks and patients with blocked arteries, has grown from about 145,000 stent-insertion procedures in 2010 to over 350,000 in 2015. But this growth has occurred amid what the NPPA had described in a report released last year as "highly exploitative pricing" that threatens patients and their families with "catastrophic medical expenditure".

The NPPA report had pointed out that differences between the landed costs of imported stents and the maximum retail prices range from between 290 per cent to 1200 percent.

"Such levels of profits in the healthcare industry are unacceptable," Gurinder Singh Grewal, former president of the Punjab Medical Council who was among three doctors from the alliance who met the NPPA officials today.

The alliance includes Samiran Nundy, a gastrointestinal surgeon in New Delhi, Sanjeeb Mukhopadhyay, a cardiologist from Bengal, and Arun Gadre, a Pune-based gynaecologist, among other doctors who have in the past raised concerns about ethics in medical practice and the healthcare industry.

The alliance members in their meeting with the NPPA cited more examples of what they say are significant differences between the cost price of stents and maximum retail prices. A device with a cost price of Rs 32,000 is sold with a maximum retail price of Rs 150,000.

The Union department of pharmaceuticals had last month issued a notification to allow the NPPA to regulate the maximum prices of stents. Government officials said the NPPA is expected to "take inputs" from the device industry and medical experts in fixing prices for stents.

Sections of cardiologists and associations of stent-makers have urged the government to take into account differences in the features of different brands and versions of stents in the process of fixing prices.

India's market bristles with dozens of stents from foreign and domestic manufacturers with prices to patients ranging from Rs 25,000 to over Rs 200,000 per stent.