Renowned surgical oncologist holds two-day consultation camp in STNM Hospital

BIJOY GURUNG

GANGTOK,: Prominent surgical oncologist Dr. Amit Gupta spent two days with cancer patients of Sikkim at the State-run STNM Hospital here on November 27 and 28.

Dr. Gupta is a Tata-trained surgical oncologist and a Maharashtra Ratna awardee. He leads Apex Onco Care, Mumbai, which offers advanced GI, HPB, and breast cancer surgeries with excellence and compassionate, patient-focused care.

In these two days at STNM Hospital, Dr. Gupta attended to 35-40 cancer patients at the OPD and gave his expert opinion on the way forward regarding their treatment.

In conversation with SIKKIM EXPRESS, the surgical oncologist shared that he had earlier treated a patient from Sikkim at his centre and wanted to visit the State to know more about the cancer cases here. It was also to get some answers on why cancer cases are increasing even though Sikkim has good air quality and lifestyle. He was also keen to know why cancer patients of Sikkim were visiting multiple centres outside the State to get expert opinions.

“My aim was to do OPD here and understand, get acquainted with Sikkim, the government, and the STNM Hospital. I gave my expert opinion to the patients so they don’t need to go anywhere else to get an opinion, and later on, we will see how to accommodate all this treatment at the same place,” shared Dr. Gupta. He added that the patients received a clear understanding of where and what kind of treatment would be best for them.

The State government has to take the decision on the next step.

“If we have collaboration with the government, our team will come to the hospital here and do as many operations as possible. Some difficult cases can be referred outside; they can be referred to our hospital also, where we put a cap on a certain amount wherein we have to do the entire treatment, instead of going to corporates where the costs are enormously high. We have been working on cancer treatment for the last 15 years and are ready to come as a team and help create awareness through camps with the government. We can work towards the aim of improvement of mental health,” shared Dr. Gupta.

Sharing his experience, the surgical oncologist highlighted that mental health is a key factor in cancer prevention and treatment. “We need to speak with patients more on this, and this is what I do at my hospital, where we have an integrated treatment protocol with experts spending time with each patient to understand and help them in their mental health, lifestyle habits, and diet,” he expressed.

“Mental health is connected with your lifestyle. If you are happy, you can be happy mentally; you are relaxed and not into any addiction. The day you are unhappy, that is when you think about where you should get happiness, then addiction and stress come. So if mental health is taken care of, and people don’t store their anger in their subconscious mind, your mind is clear. Ultimately, over a period of time, say 20 years, anger and poor mental health culminate into a disease of the same, which is cancer basically. Like fruits getting rotten after some days; the same thing happens in mental health… if you keep certain stuff in mind against someone and you don’t take it out or delete it, they will become rotten, and that is how they affect your cancer cells-good cells turn into cancer cells because of your thought process,” Dr. Gupta explained.

The surgical oncologist also stressed the need for early detection of cancer cases in Sikkim. “I think Sikkim requires dedicated cancer screening programmes and making the people of Sikkim understand why mental health is important,” he said.