Dr. Chhaya Pathak

Dr. Chhaya Pathak specializes in managing common pediatric illnesses such as fever, respiratory infections, and gastrointestinal disorders. Her approach focuses on accurate diagnosis and evidence-based treatment for quick recovery. She ensures children receive holistic care with proper nutrition and follow-up support.

Early diagnosis and timely intervention are key in handling pediatric emergencies and critical conditions. Dr. Chhaya Pathak utilizes advanced clinical expertise and bedside technologies like POCUS for rapid decision-making. Her treatment approach improves survival and recovery outcomes in acute situations.

Dr. Chhaya Pathak provides expert care for neonatal conditions including prematurity, low birth weight, and neonatal infections. She emphasizes gentle handling, continuous monitoring, and family-centered care. Her treatment plans are tailored to ensure healthy growth and development from birth.

Managing infectious diseases in children requires precision and preventive strategies. Dr. Chhaya Pathak focuses on accurate identification of infections and targeted therapies to minimize complications. She also guides parents on hygiene and preventive measures for long-term health.

Dr. Chhaya Pathak is experienced in monitoring growth and developmental milestones in children. She identifies delays early and implements corrective interventions through nutrition, therapy, and parental guidance. Her goal is to ensure every child achieves optimal developmental potential.

Preventive healthcare and immunization are vital for lifelong well-being. Dr. Chhaya Pathak advocates timely vaccinations and routine health check-ups to prevent serious illnesses. She educates families on maintaining a healthy lifestyle and strengthening children’s immunity.

Paediatric emergency assessment guided by Point-of-Care Ultrasonography (POCUS) enables immediate bedside diagnosis of acute respiratory, cardiac, and abdominal conditions in critically ill children without the delay and radiation risk of formal imaging. Dr Chhaya Pathak provides POCUS-guided emergency assessment as a standard part of acute paediatric care at Vatsalya Children's Hospital, Varanasi, using bedside lung, cardiac, and abdominal ultrasound to guide resuscitation, fluid management, and procedural interventions in real time. As the pioneer who introduced paediatric POCUS to clinical practice in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, she brings specific training and extensive clinical experience to every acute paediatric assessment. Written by Dr Chhaya Pathak, MBBS, MD (Pediatrics), Senior Consultant Paediatrician and Co-Founder, Vatsalya Children's Hospital, Mahavir Road, Orderly Bazar, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh 221002. Pioneer of Paediatric Point-of-Care Ultrasonography (POCUS) in Eastern Uttar Pradesh

Neonatal POCUS uses the open fontanelle as an acoustic window to assess brain structure and identify intraventricular haemorrhage in preterm infants, while cardiac, lung, and abdominal POCUS guides the management of sick newborns without radiation exposure or the risks of transporting a critically ill neonate to a radiology suite. Dr Chhaya Pathak performs POCUS-guided neonatal assessment at Vatsalya Children's Hospital, Varanasi, including serial cranial ultrasound for preterm infants at risk of intraventricular haemorrhage, cardiac assessment for newborns with suspected congenital heart disease or persistent pulmonary hypertension, and lung assessment for neonates in respiratory distress. This capability is particularly critical in a setting where specialist neonatal radiology is not available around the clock.

Point-of-Care Ultrasonography - POCUS - is the practice of performing bedside ultrasound at the point of patient contact, in the emergency department, at the bedside, or in the intensive care unit, with results available and interpreted immediately rather than after a formal radiology request and report cycle. In paediatric emergencies, where time from presentation to diagnosis directly affects outcomes, and where the radiation associated with CT scanning is a genuine clinical concern in children, POCUS represents one of the most significant advances in emergency paediatric practice in the past two decades. The clinical value is not only speed - it is the ability to perform a dynamic, real-time examination that answers the specific clinical question being asked without transporting a sick infant from the emergency area. Dr. Chhaya Pathak is the Pioneer of Paediatric POCUS in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, having introduced and developed bedside ultrasonography practice in paediatric emergency and critical care at Vatsalya Children's Hospital, Mahavir Road, Varanasi. With 40 years of paediatric clinical experience and 1,00,000 patients, her clinical judgement determines the POCUS application for each child - and the range of clinical questions POCUS answers in her practice is broad. Intussusception is identified by the target or doughnut sign on abdominal scanning, directing immediate surgical referral and enema reduction without radiology wait. Pleural effusion and pneumonia are assessed with lung POCUS that identifies fluid, consolidation, and B-lines in minutes. Cardiac POCUS assesses pericardial effusion, ventricular function, and volume status in the critically unwell child. Renal POCUS identifies hydronephrosis and urinary tract pathology. And procedural POCUS guides vascular access, diagnostic taps, and drainage procedures with real-time imaging that reduces complication rates. In the context of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, where families frequently travel two to three hours to reach Vatsalya Children's Hospital from district villages, the ability to perform immediate bedside diagnostic imaging at the point of first contact - without radiation, without waiting, and without moving a sick child - is not only clinically superior. It changes outcomes for children whose families could not have made a second journey for a formal radiology appointment at a different facility.

Intussusception - a condition in which one segment of the bowel telescopes into the adjacent segment, progressively compromising its blood supply - is the most common abdominal surgical emergency in children between 6 months and 3 years of age. It is also one of the most consequential conditions to miss, because the window for non-surgical treatment is time-limited and the consequences of bowel necrosis from untreated intussusception are severe. The challenge is that the early presentation of intussusception is easily mistaken for other conditions: an infant who draws up the knees, cries inconsolably for a few minutes, and then appears completely well between episodes may not initially appear to be in an emergency. Dr. Chhaya Pathak, MBBS, MD Paediatrics, 40 years and 1,00,000 patients, and Pioneer of Paediatric POCUS in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, has managed intussusception presentations across four decades of paediatric emergency practice at Vatsalya Children's Hospital, Varanasi. Her POCUS-enabled approach means that when a child presents with episodic colicky abdominal pain and inconsolable crying in the characteristic pattern of intussusception, bedside abdominal ultrasonography is performed immediately - identifying the target or doughnut sign of telescoped bowel on the first clinical contact, in the emergency department, without waiting for formal radiology. This immediate diagnosis allows prompt referral for therapeutic air or hydrostatic enema - the non-surgical reduction technique that resolves intussusception in the majority of uncomplicated cases when it is performed before bowel viability is compromised. Paediatric abdominal emergencies more broadly - including acute appendicitis, malrotation, volvulus, Meckel's diverticulum, and peritonitis - are assessed with the clinical rigour and emergency POCUS capability that 40 years of paediatric experience at a tertiary children's hospital provides. For families in Varanasi and across Eastern Uttar Pradesh who have travelled significant distances with a child in abdominal distress, the ability to reach a diagnosis and initiate the correct management pathway immediately on arrival at Vatsalya Children's Hospital is clinically critical.

Respiratory distress is the most common reason a newborn requires admission to a neonatal unit, and its causes are numerous and clinically overlapping. Transient tachypnoea of the newborn (TTN), caused by delayed clearance of fluid from the lungs after delivery, resolves on its own with supportive oxygen. Respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) in premature infants, caused by surfactant deficiency in immature lungs, requires surfactant therapy administered directly into the trachea. Pneumothorax, where air escapes from the lung into the chest cavity and compresses the lung, requires immediate needle decompression. Pneumonia from bacterial or viral infection requires antibiotic therapy. These conditions can look clinically similar in the first minutes and hours of life, yet their treatments are fundamentally different and in some cases directly opposed: giving surfactant to a baby who actually has a pneumothorax can worsen the outcome. The clinical urgency of getting the right diagnosis immediately is therefore acute. Dr. Chhaya Pathak, MD Paediatrics, Senior Consultant Neonatologist and Intensivist, Pioneer of Paediatric POCUS in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, and Co-Founder of Vatsalya Children's Hospital, Varanasi, uses lung POCUS at the cot side to differentiate between these conditions in real time without radiation and without moving the baby. Lung POCUS in the newborn identifies specific ultrasound patterns that are reliably associated with each clinical entity: the absence of normal lung sliding combined with a lung point identifies pneumothorax. A pattern of dense, coalescent B-lines replacing the normal aerated lung appearance indicates either RDS or fluid accumulation from TTN. Consolidation with air bronchograms, where the small airways within the consolidated lung are visible as bright branching lines, indicates pneumonia. These patterns allow a focused lung POCUS performed at the cot in approximately two minutes to redirect the entire management decision from clinical impression to image-guided certainty.

The brain of a premature infant is one of the most vulnerable structures in neonatology. The germinal matrix, a highly vascular region of undeveloped brain tissue near the fluid-filled ventricles, contains fragile blood vessels that have not yet acquired the structural support of mature cerebral vasculature. Under haemodynamic stress, from fluctuating blood pressure, rapid changes in blood flow during resuscitation, respiratory instability, or handling, these fragile vessels can rupture. The resulting bleed, called intraventricular haemorrhage (IVH), fills the fluid-filled ventricular spaces of the brain with blood. IVH is graded from Grade I (small germinal matrix bleed without ventricular involvement) through Grade II (blood in the ventricles without ventricular dilatation) to Grade III (blood with ventricular dilatation) to Grade IV (blood extending into the brain tissue itself), and this grading directly determines the severity of the prognosis and the monitoring intensity required. Dr. Chhaya Pathak, MD Paediatrics, Senior Consultant Neonatologist and Intensivist, Pioneer of Paediatric POCUS in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, and Co-Founder of Vatsalya Children's Hospital, Varanasi, performs and interprets cranial POCUS through the anterior fontanelle, the soft spot on the top of the skull that remains open in the newborn weeks and provides a direct acoustic window into the brain without requiring X-ray, CT radiation, or transport. At Vatsalya Children's Hospital, serial cranial ultrasound through the fontanelle is part of the standard care protocol for all premature infants at risk, performed on a designated screening schedule to detect IVH at its earliest stage, grade its severity, and monitor for complications including progressive ventricular dilatation and post-haemorrhagic hydrocephalus over the weeks of the neonatal admission. Early detection allows timely neurosurgical referral for hydrocephalus when indicated, developmental follow-up planning to begin from the neonatal period, and informed conversations with families about what the brain scan findings mean for their child's long-term outlook.