The Heart team of the Sri Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST) here has successfully performed Trans-catheter Aortic Valve Replacement/Implantation (TAVI /TAVR), a relatively new procedure in cardiology which has revolutionised the way elderly heart patients are treated world over.
Aortic stenosis is one of the most frequently acquired heart valve diseases, wherein the narrowing of the aortic valve affects the supply of blood from the heart to the rest of the body. The proportion of the elderly developing severe aortic stenosis due to degeneration and calcification of the aortic valve has been on the rise.
Till 2002, the standard mode of treatment used to be an open heart surgery to replace the diseased aortic valve, by putting the patient on a “heart-lung machine” or cardio-pulmonary bypass
TAVI, pioneered in 2002, is a minimally invasive procedure, which has emerged as a safe and viable option for treating elderly cardiac patients who may be in the high-risk, in-operable category because of various co-morbidities.
The procedure is now performed widely in Europe and in the US, with nearly a lakh procedures done in 500 plus centres so far.
TAVI was performed for the first time in India in 2012. The SCTIMST is the first public sector hospital in the South to successfully carry out this procedure.
The biggest advantage of TAVI is that the patient need not undergo open heart surgery. The old and damaged aortic valve is not removed. Instead, through a minimally invasive surgical procedure, a new bioprosthetic valve is implanted inside the old diseased aortic valve using a catheter.
The catheter is inserted through the femoral vein or the artery near the groin (transfemoral approach).
The procedure is costly and the cost of the imported valve is close to ₹18.5 lakhs. The cost of the procedure is lesser in SCTIMST compared to the corporate hospitals, an official statement from the SCTIMST said.
The institute has already done two cases of TAVI
This heart team which led the procedure included Cardiologists ( Bijulal S, Ajit Kumar V K, Harikrishnan S), Cardiac Surgeons (
Jayakumar K, Vivek V Pillai), and Cardiac Anaesthesiologists (Shrinivas Gadhinglajkar V and P K Dash). The procedure was proctored by Saurabh Gupta from Oregon, USA.
EOM
