Jorhat, June 16: The Assam Medical College and Hospital (AMCH) in Dibrugarh district has performed two open-heart surgeries successfully on June 11 and June 12, becoming the only hospital in Upper Assam and the second government hospital in the state to perform the feat.

The AMCH has also achieved the distinction of becoming the second government hospital in the country to be certified by the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) for service excellence. The first is the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh (PGIMER). With this, AMCH lab reports will be accepted all over the world.

AMCH principal Dr Atindra Kumar Adhikari said with the establishment of the facility for open-heart surgery and the successful operations, the oldest hospital in the region has ushered in a new era.

"We did not announce this earlier as we wanted to be sure that the surgeries were successful. The two females, one, a woman of 36 years and the other aged 14, had suffered from congenital heart defects but after the operations, both are doing well," Adhikari said.

The equipment and the cardiac cath lab were installed with the help of a Rs 7-crore grant from ONGC.

"The lack of this facility constrained the cardio-thoracic department with well-trained doctors not being able to utilise their abilities and many patients being asked to go outside the state or referred to other hospitals," he said.

Adhikari and the vice-principal, Dr Hem Chandra Kalita, had sent a proposal to ONGC seeking the company's help to establish a cardiac cath lab and the facility for open-heart surgery towards the end of 2012. He had persistently followed this up at ONGC, Nazira, resulting in sanction of the grant.

"The grant was utilised for setting up a cardiac catheterisation laboratory for the department of cardiology, re-structuring of the cardio-thoracic operation theatre along with the procurement of state of the art machines from Germany, including heart-lung machine and a hemotherm for the department of cardio-thoracic surgery," he said.

In order to get NABL services, AMCH had constituted committees for all its laboratories - pathology, microbiology and biochemistry - and prepared a standard operating procedure and the training for all laboratory technicians in phases with constant upgrades. These technicians strictly adhere to the standard operating procedure while conducting tests and analysis and they can be transferred from one department to the other.

NABL is linked to international bodies like International laboratory Accreditation Co-operation and Asia Pacific Laboratory Accreditation Co-operation and is a signatory to Mutual Recognition Arrangements (MRA) with the two. MRA is based on mutual evaluation and acceptance of other MRA partner laboratory accreditation systems, this facilitates acceptance of test results between countries, represented by MRA partners.

Another feather in the cap is the setting up of a Lab for Life by the Centre for Disease Control, Atlanta, USA, last year. AMCH was one among 10 model labs selected by the Centre for Disease Control in the country.