PUNE: A complicated heart procedure conducted by doctors at a private hospital in Pune saved the life of a 60-year-old man suffering from renal failure and triple vessel disease, which had narrowed the arteries and ruled out bypass as too risky.The patient was on regular dialysis, but his blood pressure would drop and heartbeats became irregular during the process. His condition was progressing towards heart failure.An angiography revealed triple vessel disease, a severe form of coronary artery disease where all three major heart arteries (left anterior descending, left circumflex and right coronary artery) have significant plaque build-up, restricting blood flow. In the particular case, the patient’s calcified blood vessels were hardened and had become too difficult to break. The heart had become weak and was pumping at 20% of its full capacity. The entire condition was high risk for any procedure.Cardiologist Dr Suraj Ingole, head of the department of cardiac sciences at VishwaRaj Hospital in Loni, resolved the problem by conducting a calcium orbital atherectomy to make way for deploying of stents in a high-risk angioplasty procedure.Ingole said, “We chose angioplasty considering the patient’s condition and complexities. The highly calcified blood vessels, which are hard to break, needed to be cleared for stents. Therefore, we conducted calcium orbital atherectomy, which is a minimally invasive procedure employing a diamond-coated crown that rotates and orbits to cut the calcium plaque.”The patient was admitted on Feb 12, the surgery took place on Feb 14 and he was discharged on Feb 16.“Once the calcified vessel was cleared, a stent was put in the left anterior descending artery,” added Ingole. The patient underwent dialysis the next day without any complications. Another angioplasty will be performed in a month or two to clear the other vessel.He said they also used the inhouse intravascular ultra sound, which is a catheter-based, minimally invasive imaging procedure that uses high-frequency sound waves to generate detailed, real-time 360-degree cross-sectional images from inside blood vessels.The case was risky and complex, said the anaesthetist present during the procedure. “The affordable process is a new ray of hope for common people in the eastern periphery of Pune, where such procedures are a rarity,” he said.
