Dr Masum Siraj, senior Consultant and head of cardiac surgery department at Ibrahim Cardiac Hospital and Research Institute in Dhaka, has sent a rejoinder to our report headlined “Surgeon accused of mistreatment” published on June 13.

He claimed that the report was untrue and one-sided, and presented unjustly with a motive by manipulating information, and without discussing with him.

In his rejoinder, he said the bypass surgery on a patient named Kanchan Kumar Dey was done on an emergency basis as per the protocol to save his life.

“During the surgery, one bypass graft was done in each of the three blood vessels. By protocol, graft needs to be done on the healthy part of the blood vessel next to the vessel stenosis. But no healthy part was found in the case of the patient. The entire vessel was thick and rough... Besides, the status of the vein and artery tissue used [in the bypass] was not also in good condition. The part of Aorta in the upper point of vein graft was sclerosed. All of these three conditions is harmful to the graft. This was also mentioned clearly in the discharge summary,” he wrote.

In the following angiogram in April, when the patient again had chest pain, the right coronary artery was found to have narrowed down, according to the rejoinder.

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