Doctors of Kasturba Hospital successfully operated upon a patient with rare congenital heart deformity recently, a press release issued by the hospital has said.
The release said that 21-year-old Pushpa (name changed) came to the hospital complaining of palpitation and breathlessness. While the complaints existed for some time, it started aggravating lately.
She was evaluated by cardiologists Tom Devasia and Hashir Kareem and investigations such as ECG, chest X-ray and Echocardiogram were carried out. The findings were suggestive of ventricular septal defect.
In common parlance, it refers to a hole in the heart, which is essentially a congenital defect between the two major chambers (ventricles) of the heart.
The echocardiogram confirmed the size of the hole to be around 20mm which is very unusual.
This made the flow of blood abnormal with pure and impure blood mixing from left side to right side of the heart.
Dr. Devasia and Dr. Kareem proceeded to close the defect with a large 22 mm device. “The procedure was done through the veins of a leg. Therefore, no splitting of the sternal bone was required,” they said.
The doctors were happy that the procedure was done without leaving a surgical scar on the body.
The patient was discharged from hospital and is progressing well.
“This was the largest VSD device deployed in our centre and also in this region so far. It is very rare to see such large defects in this age group and amenable for corrective procedure,” said Dr. Devasia.
