Lucknow's SGPGIMS claims first surgery of a kind

Prestigious Sanjay Gandhi Post-graduate Institute of Medical Science here today claimed to have become the "first" government hospital in the country to have successfully repaired heart valve of a patient through a minimally invasive surgical procedure.
The unique procedure called -- transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), common in western countries does away with the requirement of open-heart bypass surgery, making it suitable for the frail and elderly patients, who cannot withstand the gruelling surgical procedure.
It involves placing a fully-collapsible replacement valve at the site using a catheter inserted from groin of the patient who is administered only local anaesthesia. The new valve is expanded which pushes out the old valve taking its place, thus regulating the blood flow.

The valve replacement is generally done through open-heart surgeries which can now be completely avoided.
"Professor P K Goel, Head Department of Cardiology, and his team were able to accomplish a landmark of doing the first percutaneous aortic valve implant procedure in the state of Uttar Pradesh and first in any government set up in the country recently on a 76-year-old man, with co-morbidities of frail body structure (body weight 45 kg) associated obstructive pulmonary disease and renal impairment which precluded open-heart surgery to replace the valve in his case," Senior PRO of SGPGIMS, Monalisa Chaudhari said while giving details about sugery.

She said the heart valve (aortic valve) was replaced accessing heart through a six mm puncture near groin. The patient is allowed mobility within 12-24 hours.
"TAVI is quite a routine procedure in the western world but our country still is in process of approvals. But it is permissible on compassionate ground with licensing on an individual patient as was done in this case," Chaudhari said.