Man with rare heart condition has surgery

June 06, 2013 10:10 am | Updated 10:10 am IST - CHENNAI:

A 58-year-old man with a rare condition was recently operated on at Balaji Hospital in Chromepet.

The patient had complained of breathlessness and palpitations, and was diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease with a severe narrowing of the mitral valve. The patient also suffered from mild aortic valve regurgitation and atrial fibrillation.

When cardiologists began their investigation, they realised that the patient’s heart was on the right side. “The patient’s heart was on the opposite side, as were other organs like the liver, gall bladder, spleen and intestines,” said cardiothoracic surgeon S. Balachandran, who performed the surgery.

“In such patients the position of the valves are also reversed. The condition is believed to occur in one in 12,000 people. Of these, in one in 30 people the position of all the blood vessels are reversed. It is even rarer to find a patient who has this condition and who has rheumatic heart disease that requires a mitral valve replacement,” he added.

The surgeon said it was a challenge to operate on such patients as surgeons could have spot decisions to make after opening the heart. “The patient is put on a heart-lung machine and we have to operate from the left side. While such a surgery in a normal patient may last around three hours, it took us four and half hours to complete this surgery,” said Dr. Balachandran, who has served at Government Stanley Hospital and Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, before starting the cardiothoracic surgery department at Balaji Hospital.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.