Ahmedabad-based surgeon, Dr Vikram Shah, who performed 3,000 knee surgeries in 2008, has given no leg to stand on to his closest peer in the world, a UK surgeon who carried out 1,000 surgeries in the same year. Shah, however, is not exercised by the figures that have fractured records.
“I do not want to talk about my achievement. I want my work to speak for itself,” he told DNA in an exclusive interview. But numbers inexorably speak for his work: an average of more than eight surgeries a day in 2008!
“I conduct an average of 10 surgeries every day. The highest has been 18 surgeries in a day. In all, 17-20,000 surgeries are carried out in India every year; I conduct about 16-17% of them. The other leading doctor is Delhi-based Dr Rajagopal with 600 surgeries,” he said. Indeed, Shah, who set up Shalby hospital, is unassuming for a man who puts a significant proportion of patients from the world over back on their feet.
Shah has been practicing in Ahmedabad for the past 15 years. He has also worked in the UK for five years and, before that, in other countries as well. “In the first year after I returned to India, I performed only 14 surgeries, the next year 18, and the year after that 100,” he said. “The number has continued to grow after that. Word-of-mouth publicity is the only thing that works for a doctor; it gives patients confidence in the ability of the doctor.”
He may not advertise his abilities but, if a patient asks for experts in knee replacement surgery, Dr Vikram Shah is almost always one of the three doctors recommended. “As Indian facilities offer a cost advantage over facilities in the West, we get many more patients than we would otherwise,” he said.
Shah has become something of a legend in Ahmedabad where anecdotes about him abound. Setting to rest all speculation about how he manages so much stress, he said, “I work with a team of 20 people, all of whom are highly efficient. The team works on the pre and post-operative procedures of each surgery while I perform the actual operation which takes about 20 minutes. I take a break after performing five surgeries back-to-back.”
The surgeon’s efficiency is evident not only in his surgeries but also in the way he attends to the smallest operational detail of the hospital. He says he works to strengthen brand Shalby and not Vikram Shah.
