New Delhi: Doctors at a city hospital successfully performed the catheter-based procedure to repair a leaking heart valve without surgery in a 69-year-old man suffering from repeated heart failure and for whom open heart surgery was not possible.
Doctors said that the 69-year-old became the first person in India to get operated through “MitraClip”.
A team of doctors led by Dr Ashok Seth, the chairman of Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, and supported by Professor Saibal Kar of Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, successfully performed the procedure of MitraClip to repair the leaking heart valve without surgery.
According to Dr Seth, the MitraClip is a catheter based non-surgical repair of the mitral valve inside the heart and is performed in the cath lab like angioplasty. “Special catheters are inserted through the large vein in the groin and passed from the right chamber of the heart to the left chamber by puncturing the partition called interatrial septum. Subsequently, under the guidance of echocardiography and X-ray, a clip is put on the leaking mitral valve to decrease the leak. This improves the condition of the patient. The patient is normally ready to be discharged in 24-48 hours’ time,” said Dr Seth.
Doctors claimed that the patient had previous bypass surgery 13 years ago. More recently, his heart had enlarged due to the severely leaking valve, thus causing breathlessness and heart failure.
Till now, open heart surgery with repair or replacement of the valve had been the only possible treatment for such patients in India. However, it is often high risk and may not be beneficial.
Professor Kar said, “Recently, the COAPT trial demonstrated the benefits of MitraClip procedure not only in improving the well-being and symptoms of the patient, but also in improving the survival chances of the patient over two years.”
