About Dr Sulagna Dutta
MBBS (Hons), MD and DNB (Paediatrics), DCH and MRCPCH (UK), DM (Neonatology)
A neonatologist who also likes the ordinary visits
Dr Dutta spent three years as a DM resident in the neonatal intensive care unit at IPGMER and SSKM Hospital, a large referral unit that takes sick babies from across West Bengal. Most nights there were babies born at 26 or 27 weeks, babies who had not breathed well at birth, and babies with heart or surgical problems. That is where she learned to ventilate, to read a bedside echo, to cool a baby's brain after asphyxia, and to sit with frightened parents at 3 a.m.
Before that she trained in general paediatrics at Medical College Kolkata and worked as a senior registrar at Dr B. C. Roy Postgraduate Institute and AMRI Hospitals, Salt Lake. So she still enjoys the visits that never make it into textbooks: the first week weight check, the toddler who won't eat, the cough that will not go away.
She passed the DM final examination as university topper in 2025, and holds the DCH and MRCPCH from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in the UK.
Training and milestones
- 2009
Higher Secondary, West Bengal
First among girls in the state board examination.
- 2016
MBBS (Honours)
R. G. Kar Medical College, Kolkata. Honours in six subjects and the Anandamohan Kumari Medal in surgery. Sixth in the state in the postgraduate entrance examination.
- 2019
MD (Paediatrics)
Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata.
- 2019
Senior registrar
Dr B. C. Roy Postgraduate Institute of Paediatric Sciences, then AMRI Hospitals, Salt Lake (2019 to 2022).
- 2021
DNB (Paediatrics) and DCH (UK)
National Board of Examinations, and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
- 2023
MRCPCH (UK)
Membership of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
- 2024
First prize, NEOCON research presentation
State neonatology conference.
- 2025
DM (Neonatology), gold medal
IPGMER and SSKM Hospital, Kolkata. University topper in the final examination.
How Dr Dutta works with families
- She explains what she is seeing and why, in plain language, and puts numbers in context.
- Decisions about your baby are made with you. In the NICU that means daily updates and parents at the cot side, not in the corridor.
- She follows current evidence and published guidelines, and tells you when the evidence is thin.
- She avoids tests and medicines that will not change treatment, antibiotics most of all.
Clinical expertise
- Care of preterm and term newborns with respiratory distress, sepsis, pneumonia, perinatal asphyxia, congenital heart disease and neurological problems
- Respiratory support: HFOV, SIMV, non invasive ventilation, CPAP, heated humidified high flow and inhaled nitric oxide
- Haemodynamics: point of care ultrasound, echocardiography, management of shock and persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn
- Parenteral and enteral nutrition for preterm and surgical newborns
- Neonatal encephalopathy: therapeutic hypothermia, aEEG, seizure control and follow-up
- Pre and post operative care of surgical newborns, with paediatric surgeons
Procedures
- Endotracheal intubation, emergency airway management and surfactant administration
- PICC lines, umbilical venous and arterial catheters
- Lumbar puncture and exchange transfusion
- Neonatal resuscitation (NRP certified), including leading complex resuscitations
- Bedside intercostal chest drains and peritoneal drains
- Cardiac, lung and abdominal point of care ultrasound