Doctors at The Madras Medical Mission (MMM) hospital have performed a catheter-based pulmonary valve replacement procedure for a 51-year-old patient from the Maldives. This time, the procedure cost much less than it usually does because of a change in regulations.
According to a release from the hospital, the patient, who previously had a leak in the aortic valve underwent the Ross procedure 19 years ago, which involved the replacement of the aortic valve with the patient’s own pulmonary valve and the pulmonary valve was in turn replaced with a cadaveric pulmonary homograft.
In such cases, the pulmonary homograft progressively degenerates and constricts as it does not have any living tissue. The patient faced a similar situation and was referred by cardiologists in the Maldives to MMM Hospital.
A team, led by K. Sivakumar, senior consultant and head of paediatric cardiology, suggested a percutaneous catheter-based approach to replace the homograft with a new valve instead of an open-heart surgery as it involved no fresh scar and minimal hospitalisation. Dr. Sivakumar said the procedure took about 3.5 hours.
