What's New

Doctors perform rare heart surgery
at MIOT Hospitals
By Ramya Kannan

Chennai Nov. 11. A team of cardiac surgeons performed a five-vessel by-pass (on beating heart) on 67-year old S. Varadarajan of Ayanavaram and replaced parts of the aorta in subsequent procedures lasting eight hours.

What the doctors wrote in their records was: `aneurysm of the arch and descending aorta and 90 per cent narrowing of the left main coronary artery’. What it meant was a balloon like enlargement of the main blood vessel that carries pure blood out of the heart and reduced pumping capacity of the heart.

After consulting several doctors, Mr.Varadarajan finally stopped at MIOT Hospitals and consulted cardiac surgeon V.V. Bashi. The patient’s double heart condition complicated matters and required careful surgical planning, Dr.Bashi said. Investigation of medical history revealed that a few such operations had been performed earlier, using the heart-lung machine for the bypass and correction of the aneurysm.

However, since using the heart-lung machine for the entire operation would be risky, Dr.Bashi decided to do the five by-passes on a beating heart through an opening in the middle of the chest, improving the patient’s heart condition immediately. “Then we opened the left side of the chest, connecting the patient to the heart-lung machine. The patient’s body was cooled to 15 degrees C and the blood supply was stopped for half an hour. Within this period, we stitched a tube graft to replace the whole of the arch and descending aorta”, he explained.

Dr.Bashi led the surgical team, assisted by S.K.Das and Srinivas Babu, anaesthesiologists Aju Jacob and Subramaniam, nurses, perfusionists and technical staff.

The hospital was considering introducing a ‘heart insurance’ policy, whereby an annual premium, that was affordable could be charged for life long health care at MIOT, the hospital’s founder P.V.A. Mohandas told presspersons on the occasion.