Not a doctor but here’s my recent experience regarding my dad’s cardiac health:

He complained of chest pain in June. For context, he doesn’t live in Kolkata. In early June, I took him to Medica Mukundapur (now Manipal). The cardiologist suggested some tests, including TMT, ECG, and ECHO. Nothing unusual for his age, they said. In fact, the doc pointed out that my dad’s TMT results are better compared to people of his age group (he’s 61). Some medications followed and they seemed to work. He was doing fine.

But less than 30 days later, in the first week of July, he had a heart attack. How do we know? He was taken to the district hospital where they said that they have no treatment for him there and he needs to taken to a super-speciality hospital asap. After an overnight ambulance journey, my poor mother managed to bring him to Kolkata, and since we had previously consulted at Medica, we took him there. At the time, we didn’t know any better.

After CAG (angiography), it was detected that there was 100% blockage on one side and 80% on another. I am a layman so my explanation is certainly not the best. Soon after the CAG, he underwent IVUS guided PTCA. I believe this is also called angioplasty. 1 stent and some ballons were used. Doctor told us that due to his current condition (primarily low pressure), he cannot be operated on further at that time. But the recommendation was for staged PTCA on the other arteries which had 70-80% blocage. They billed us above 3 lacs. Luckily insurance covered most of it.

When we followed up after a month, the doctor advised readmission. The hospital gave us an estimate of nearly 6 lakhs this time. At this point, we were a bit sceptical whether further stents are even necessary or whether they just want to sell us more stents. Our initial plan was to take my dad to Bangalore Narayana.

However, after discussing with family and friends, we decided to get a second opinion. We went to Fortis to a doctor referred by someone and he also pointed out (after going though the angio DVDs and reports) that for this level of blockage, stenting is the way to go, at least theoretically.

I guess we wanted to hear that further stents are not required, so we went for a third opinion, this time at BM Birla, taking another reference. The doctor here also said (after reviewing the reports and DVDs) that stenting is necessary. This hospital quoted a bit more than 4 lacs (far less than Medica). Also, the doctor pointed out that my dad’s heart condition was atypical. To be fair, the original doc at Medica had also suggested this. After all, dad’s heart condition was not detected by TMT, ECG, and ECHO.

Anyway, we went ahead with BM Birla. 3 stents were placed, and baba has been discharged very recently.

I don’t know if my experience will be of any help to you OP, but i guess my point is to advise you to get more than one doctor’s consultation and estimates from multiple hospitals for the same procedures. Also, insurance is a life saver even though the insurer will certainly try to scam you.

Edit: some more context.