Hyderabad: A pioneering cardiac procedure, percutaneous transcatheter aortic value implantation (TAVI), has been performed n an 80-year-old man with critical calcific aortic stenosis by a team of doctors led by Dr P C Rath at Apollo Hospitals in Jubilee Hills here. The procedure was performed for the first time in this part of the country including Telangana and Andhra Predesh. “TAVI was performed on the elderly patient in the cath lab from the groin region as in angioplasty. After the patient was administrated short general anaesthesia, the value was put to the heart though the femoral artery and was implanted accurately under the guidance of fluoroscopy and trans-esophageal echo. The value implanted was the latest second-generation valve from Medtronic USA called Evolute-R. The procedure lasted about one and a half hours.
Immediately after the procedure, the patient was extubated, he became conscious and was shifted to ICU. He was monitored in the ICU for two days, for three ore days in the ward and was then discharged,” Dr PC Rath explained. Dr Rath was assisted by Dr Manoj Agarwal, Dr B. Dikshit and Dr Sundar. Dr Rath said TAVI is being routinely performed in Europe and of late in the USA for patients who are at risk for an open heart surgery. “The procedure got FDA approval in 2015 and since then has been being routinely performed in the USA. In India the procedure is not yet approved by DCGI and needs permission on case-to-case basis and then the device is imported. Very few cases have been performed in India and the ones performed were mostly in Delhi and Bangalore,” he said. Though the device is expensive, the procedure is a boon for such patients to be able to save their lives and continue to live through a relatively safe non-surgical procedure.
