Heart valve replaced sans open-heart surgery and cardio-pulmonary bypass

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a rare feat, Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology replaced a heart valve without open-heart surgery and cardio-pulmonary bypass this week. The trans-catheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) involved inserting a specially designed valve through the artery on the groin region. Such procedures are conducted on patients who do not have the health condition to undergo open heart surgery. The folded valve was sent through the artery to the location of the diseased aortic valve and was successfully deployed.

“The procedure will take around 45 minutes but it is expensive. The cost of the valve with associated monitoring system is close to Rs 18.5 lakh. It was made available to the patient here at a very nominal cost with the help of state-central government funds,” said Dr Asha Kishore, Director of SCTIMST. While a corporate hospital will charge around Rs 3 lakh for the procedure, experts at SCTIMST conducted it for around Rs 18,000, officials said.

Two patients underwent surgery and one of them was a doctor, who already an almost dysfunctional artificial valve. The procedure was earlier conducted at a private hospital in Kochi. The procedure was performed by a team comprising cardiologists Bijulal S, Ajit Kumar VK, Harikrishnan S; cardiac surgeons Jayakumar K, Vivek V Pillai and cardiac anaesthesiologists Shrinivas Gadhinglajkar V andPK Dash. The procedure was proctored by Dr. Saurabh Gupta from Oregon, USA. Dr Ajit Kumar told DC that he expected the costs to come down soon once India started manufacturing the device after joining clinical trials. Once cost reduction was achieved, this would be the most suited procedure for valve replacement as it is more patient-friendly.