PGI-Chandigarh conducts rare high risk heart surgery

Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research's Advanced Cardiac Centre here has done a rare high-risk surgery on a 90-year-old man, the first in the institute's history.

A team of doctors under the guidance of Yash Paul Sharma performed the highly complex and lifesaving angioplasty on a patient who was suffering from a weak heart and critical coronary artery disease and severe COPD and was too old and weak to undergo open-heart surgery.

Himanshu Gupta, Associate Professor, explained the patient was not fit for open-heart surgery but at the same time the angioplasty procedure was also very complex and high risk as the patient had heavily calcified left main trifurcation disease with a weak heart.

"In this procedure, we used the Impella device, which is a miniature heart pump that supports the patient vitals during the process of angioplasty," he told IANS on Thursday.

Doctors explained that as the patient had heavily calcified coronaries "we had to first use three different sized Rotablator burrs followed by a shock wave (IVL) balloon to remove a large amount of calcium before the stents could be successfully implanted in the patient".

The procedure was long taking almost four hours and the Impella device helped in keeping the patient stable during the entire length of the procedure.

The patient recovered remarkably after the procedure and was successfully discharged after two days.

This kind of procedure has also been successfully performed in the past, however, without the use of new devices like Impella, they used to be extremely high risk for the patient.

"We are happy that we at the PGI can now use this device for such high-risk procedures and improve patient safety and outcomes," added Gupta. (AA/IANS)