GH cardiologists perform rare surgeries

 

Chennai:

It was a professional miracle at the Government General Hospital and Chief Minister’s Health Insurance Scheme that provided 70-year-old Ramanathan a new lease of life after he suffered a massive heart attack on October.

Dr M S Ravi, professor and head of the department of cardiology in the hospital along with a team of doctors found that Ramanathan from Madhur village in Tirutanni were successful in performing a surgery after Ramanathan was found to have a 10mm hole in the lower chamber of the heart.

This complication is rare and occurs in .2 or .3 per cent of the population. Under such a complication, only five per cent have survived. Even the death rate after the surgery is 50 to 80 per cent, said Dr Ravi.

 The usual treatment for this would be a open heart surgery but the patient had low blood pressure and low pulse. Dr M S Ravi and his team of doctors that included Dr Muthukumar, Dr Meenakshi, Dr Saminathan and Dr S Ravi then went for device closure to seal the rupture.

“The doctors chose a 18mm ventricular septal perfect closure device made of nitino mesh. This device is double size of the hole identified. Once, the device is in, it will split and then stop the blood to seep. The heart tissue will grow on it.

“Once the device was fixed, the patient’s pulse and blood pressure became normal,” Dr Ravi said.

Cardiologist Dr Selvarani, who was also present during the press conference, said the surgery was performed in October 27. Dr Ravi said the announcement of success of the surgery was done now after the hospital was fully satisfied that Ramanathan did not suffer any complications.

Interestingly, only a handful of government and private hospitals all over the country have performed this procedure and the Government General Hospital, Chennai is the first government institution in the state to perform this procedure successfully.

The entire procedure could have cost Ramanathan Rs 3 to 4 lakh in a private hospital but under the Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme it was done free of cost.

Interestingly, Dr Ravi’s team also performed another rare surgery on a 22-year old with rare congenital cardiac ailment. The patient was suffering from coarctation of aorta which was present since his birth. It involves obstruction to blod flow to the lower part of the body affecting the largest blood vessel in the body, the Aorta. The doctors performed balloon angioplasty and stenting thus avoided open heart surgical procedure