Eight months ago, Saji Nair of Puthupally, was out for a morning stroll when he experienced a sudden confusion.
“I could not understand what was happening, but I went suddenly blind. It was like someone had pulled a white sheet before my eyes. I was confused and scared. My wife pacified me and then we went to a hospital nearby. They said it was ok, gave me an injection and asked me to go home and sleep. I woke up in the evening with blurred vision. That’s when we rushed to Kottayam Medical College,” he says.
A brain MRI revealed the presence of a clot in the brain, which had broken off from a major stenosis (block or plaque build-up) in one of the carotid arteries (major blood vessels to the brain)
“What I had experienced was a TIA (transient ischaemic attack) or a minor stroke, a warning signal that I could be in for a major stroke soon, unless the carotid artery was cleared,” says the 47-year-old.
He was referred to Sree Chitra Tirunal Centre for Medical Sciences and Technology, where within a few weeks he underwent Carotid Endarterectomy (CEA), a surgical procedure which is the gold standard for removing vulnerable plaque from carotid artery.
TIA episode
Mr. Nair knows that he was very lucky that his TIA episode was evaluated immediately and treated right.
Almost all of those who experience major strokes would have had previous warning signals which they would have ignored or misunderstood, probably because the symptoms vanished within 24 hours.
“A TIA is a window of opportunity when we can intervene and prevent a catastrophic stroke in future by performing CEA. This procedure thus has a major role in preventing strokes which are caused by the plaque formation in the carotid arteries. At least 30 per cent of stroke cases are caused by the stenosis of carotid arteries. While stenting — as in the case of coronary arteries — is an option, CEA is by far a superior and successful procedure,” says M. Unnikrishnan, Senior Professor, Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, SCTIMST. SCTIMST has had excellent surgical outcome with all its CEA cases and the procedural risk has been minimum at 1 per cent
CEA is done only in a few centres across the country and SCTIMST is today a high volume centre, having done the most number of CEA at over 210 cases.
