Mangalore: Complex Cardiac Surgery Done at A J Hospital for Congenital Heart Disease
Media Release (GA)
Mangalore, Feb 12: It is six years since A J Hospital & Research Centre, Mangalore is established and is the only referral centre in and around Mangalore for all cardiac ailments. A J Hospital has achieved many a milestones by conducting various rare surgeries and procedures.
A J Hospital & Research Centre is a major referral centre for Mangalore and surrounding regions and has performed complex cardiac procedures and surgeries with excellent results and a mortality of less than 0.5%. The centre has done more than 5000 angiograms and about 1500 open heart surgeries. The figures speak for themselves on the efficiency of the centre.
Nagaveni, a 19-year-old girl from Sagar in Shimoga ditrict was suffering from breathing difficulty and weakness on walking and recurrent respiratory tract infection. She was sent to A J Hospital for evaluation.
Dr Praveen J Shetty, cardiologist at A J Hospital & Research Centre who did ECG, echocardiogram and angiogram diagnosed her to have a complex heart disease – Atrial (sinus venosus) and Ventricular Septal Defects, Pulmonary Valvular Stenosis, Binodal disease (Sick sinus syndrome + AV block). She had severe physical debility because of heart problems.
In addition, she had situs inversus abdominis (the organs were in opposite side of normal) and interrupted IVC (venous drainage from the lower half of the body was draining to heart in an abnormal manner). Also, she had features of right ventricular failure.
The treatment option was only surgery and without surgery she would have had high risk of sudden death or severe compromise in quality of life. Even though the financial position of the patient was not very sound, it was decided to go ahead with the surgery with minimal cost to the patient.
She underwent open heart surgery on January 30, 2008 performed by chief cardiac surgeon Dr Harish and his team comprising of Dr Gururaj Tantry, Anil and Jagdish Patil.
The surgery was more complex in view of reversal of abdominal organs, abnormalities of venous blood flow (interrupted IVC), closure of multiple holes, opening of severely blocked valve using temporary pacemaker and cardiopulmonary bypass in a high risk patient (patient’s heart rate of only 28-30 beats / minute). All these complex procedures had to be done in one sitting spanning around 8 hours because the patient could not have afforded second surgery.
During this complex surgery, both the holes in the heart were closed and blood flow to the lungs was increased.
This is a rare and first-of-its-kind case in Mangalore and possibly Karnataka, incidence of which is one per 50,000 to 75,000 patients suffering from heart disease and one per 2 million common people.
Even in the best of heart care centres of the world, the success rate of this kind of complex surgery is 50%. Doctors at AJ Hospital have completed this surgery successfully and the patient is recovering well after surgery and is awaiting permanent pacemaker.