KARACHI: A medical panel formed by the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) for the treatment of former petroleum minister Dr Asim Hussain, who is in the custody of the Rangers for a terror-financing investigation, has said the hospital was waiting for his medical reports when the patient was taken away along with medical records without the hospital administration being informed, it emerged on Wednesday.

The six-member panel, which comprised the NICVD executive director and five senior cardiologists of the hospital, said the patient was admitted to the hospital late night on Sept 22 with complaints of sweating, dizziness and `uncontrolled blood pressure` andwas taken away on Sept 28 at 12.30am along with his medical records `without informing the administration`.

Giving its observations on his health condition, the panel said: `He is a known case of diabetes mellitus, hypertension with history of supraventricular tachycardia (a cardiac arrhythmia arising from improper electrical activity of the heart). He was also on medicine for BPH.

It found the patient with two `major issues`, which were elevated blood pressure, postural hypertension with electrolyte imbalance and raised creatinine level and significant ECG changes such as ST depression in lead 1, AVL and praecordialleads.

It said during his stay at the hospital the patient also complained of tremors limited to his lowerextremity along with back pain and also had three episodes offaecal incontinence.

The panel met on Monday after the Rangers took back the custody of Dr Hussain. It said a comprehensive medical plan was made to address his [Dr Hussain`s] problems. `His antihypertensive medications were changed. Aldactone, Co-approval and Approval were stopped. He was put on Exforge (high blood pressure medication) for BP control along with Calan SR (high BP medicine) that he was taking for hypertension and supraventricular tachycardia, said the panel.

According to the panel report, the patient was encouraged to drink a lot of water. After three to four days his creatinine level settied to 1.3 from 2.2, sodium increased from 129 to 133 with adequate control of blood pressure.`Since the changes in ECG were dynamic in nature, they were of extreme concern to the panel as they could be due to ischemia (an inadequate blood supply to an organ or part of the body, especially the heart muscles),` the report stated.

Angiogram The experts said the patient and his family informed cardiologists that he had a coronary angiogram about three months back in the UK. `It was decided to wait for his coronary angiogram film and report which was not available at that time. As an alternative, if the report was not made available, myocardial perfusion scan was planned to come to a definitive conclusion,` the report said.

Myocardial perfusion scan (also referred to as MPI) is a nuclearmedicine procedure that illustrates the function of the heart muscle (myocardium). It evaluates many heart conditions such as coronary artery disease, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and heart wall motion abnormalities.

For the back pain, the report said, he was referred to Prof Anisuddin Bhatti, professor of orthopaedics and executive director of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, who examined the patient and referred him to neurosurgeon Prof Raza Rizvi for the evaluation of his symptoms. It added Prof Rizvi came for opinion but was unable to see the patient.

The panel concluded in its observations that the patient was taken away on Monday (September 28) at 00:30 along with his medical records `without informing the administration`.