LUNCH WITH BS: Naresh Trehan

Affairs of the heart

India's best-known heart surgeon on his new plans

It took Naresh Trehan, executive director, Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre, some time to reach the table where I had been waiting for him for about half an hour. Threesixty at The Oberoi is not a huge restaurant but India's best known heart surgeon seemed to have acquaintances seated at almost every table, writes Business Standard. He shook hands with about half a dozen people before my turn came.

Dressed in a crisp white cotton shirt and cream trousers, Trehan looked relaxed and at peace with himself, though he was coming straight from the operation theatre. No less than 18 operations are carried out at the Escorts Heart Institute every day, six days a week. Trehan supervises all of them, handling the complicated ones himself.

"Don't you feel drained at the end of the day," I was eager to know. "Not at all. It is like meditation. I find it energising," said Trehan. Of course, he has had several memorable experiences to tell.

One day, as he was leaving for a swim with his kids, a woman called to say her husband was dead and could he do something about it. "I reached on time and was able to resuscitate the man. Two weeks later, he walked away from the hospital," he said.

To his credit, Trehan has created a world class institute in the Escorts Heart Institute ever since he returned to India in 1988, leaving behind a flourishing practice in the US. (He had written to half a dozen Indian businessmen on how to create a top-end heart institute in the country; only the Late Har Prasad Nanda, the grand old man of Escorts, responded.)

"Our mortality rate of 0.8 (only one in 120 people operated upon dies within a month) and infection rate of 0.3 are the best in the world. We do around 4,500 bypass surgeries, 13,000 angiographies and 3,500 angioplasties every year. That makes us number one by far in the world," Trehan told me soon after ordering a Diet Coke for himself. Though it was a Saturday afternoon and the Delhi sun was merciless, he turned down an offer for some chilled beer.

"I don't drink very frequently. Anyways, I have to get back to work," he said.

In spite of his achievements, Trehan said that he was perturbed by the state of the nation. Rising income disparities, he said, could soon lead to social unrest. The solution, he said, was to create an "army of nation-builders."

"Hey Doc," a man had walked up to our table and cut short Trehan's chain of thoughts, "Selling out to Fortis [a hospital chain set up by the Singh family of Ranbaxy], aren't you?"

The talk of Rajan Nanda putting the Escorts Heart Institute on the block had been doing the rounds for some time now. "There are others also," Trehan said quietly, trying to nip the conversation in the bud.

"Arre, it is Fortis," the young man was persistent. "Well, it's not me who needs the money," this time Trehan created a diversion with a short laugh. He admired the man's green shirt and that put an end to the talk. "What's the truth?," I picked up where the young man had left. Trehan admitted Escorts was strapped for cash and was looking at options to raise money.

It was now past two, and we headed for the salad bar. Though Trehan avoided all heavy stuff (he is 59 but looks at least 10 years younger), he asked for a helping of chilgoza seeds, which he sprinkled merrily over his salad.

"Aren't you bothered at the prospects of working under a new management," I asked him returning to the impending sale of the Escorts Heart Institute. "Not if the ethics we have created are adhered to," he said, adding: "I have asked my doctors to hold on to their patients the way people in the hills clung to trees during the Chipko movement."

But there was no mistaking that he was apprehensive about working for a new owner. "What some of the new hospital chains are doing is criminal. They are giving commissions to doctors for referring patients. In the US, they can be jailed for doing this," he said.

Having finished the salad, Trehan opted for sushi, while I settled for some Indian fare "" biryani with raita and fish tikka. As he negotiated the sushi deftly with chopsticks, I asked him about his new project in Gurgaon, the Medicity, a Rs 1,000-crore holistic treatment centre combining modern medicine with traditional therapies.

"Mixing modern medicine with traditional medicine like homeopathy can reduce the side effects as well as bring down the cost of medication," he said. When I pointed out a recent article in Nature which said that homeopathy was all hogwash, Trehan said one of the key areas of research at Medicity would be to record how traditional therapies worked.

"We know that regular use of Tulsi leaves can bring down the blood pressure. In another 10-15 years, we will know exactly how it works," he said.

Our conversation was interrupted by a waitress who handed Trehan a card. It was KC Anand, industrialist and well-known vintage car expert. He was sitting at the other end of the restaurant and had sent his regards. "Tell him, we have to travel together to Lahore in one of his vintage cars," Trehan sent a message back.

Trehan, with his ability to set hearts right, is a man much in demand. In fact, for the hour-and-a-half that we were in the restaurant, his silver Motorazr never sat idle for more than five minutes at a stretch.

In spite of being hard pressed for time, Trehan decided to have an Espresso. I asked him if he had ever been faced with a situation like the doctors in Munnabhai MBBS.

"I have seen the film only in bits. It was really over the top," Trehan said.

Soon, he was on his way back to the hospital. But not before shaking hands with and hugging another half-a-dozen diners at the restaurant.