Daijiworld Media Network—Mangalore (RD/CN)

Mangalore, Aug 11: Surgeons at K S Hegde Hospital performed a rare surgery on a 71-year-old woman for a giant coronary artery aneurysm and coronary to pulmonary artery fistula, recently.

The coronary artery provides the main blood supply to the heart muscles and its normal size is about 2 mm. In this patient, there was an abnormal dilatation of the coronary artery to almost 20 times than its normal size. This is called giant coronary aneurysm. It was almost the size of a lemon.

The patient also had an abnormal connection between the coronary artery and pulmonary artery which is called coronary pulmonary fistula that results in mixing of pure and impure blood. This condition is a rare one with an incidence of less than 1 in 1 lac people. The patient was operated upon in a major open heart surgery which lasted for almost five hours. Her coronary aneurysm was restored and the abnormal fistulous connection was closed. She made an uneventful recovery and got discharged.

The condition of the patient was diagnosed by Dr K Subramanyam, chief interventional cardiologist of K S Hegde Hospital. The patient was operated on by a team of doctors led by Dr M Gopalakrishnan, chief cardio-thoracic surgeon, K S Hegde Medical Academy (KSHEMA), and included Dr Manjunath Kamath, Dr Krishna Prasad, Dr Rakesh K R, and Venugopal.