Heart Surgery Live Telecost
A transradial method to place a stent in the blood vessel in the heart was recently telecast from the G. Kuppuswamy Naidu Memorial Hospital here to a gathering of cardiologists and cardio-thoracic surgeons in Thailand.The hospital’s cardiologist Rajpal K. Abhaichand demonstrated the technique while placing a stent in a man’s blood vessel that had a block. (A stent, which looks like a scaffolding, is placed in the blood vessel that has narrowed. The narrowing affects blood flow and causes heart attack. Cardiologists say the stent helps in restoring normal blood flow.)
A two-way teleconferencing enabled interaction on certain aspects of this procedure, Dr. Abhaichand told presspersons here on Wednesday.Trained in Paris in this technique, Dr. Abhaichand explained that the transradial approach involved the passing of a catheter through the blood vessel in arm, as against the conventional mode of passing it through the vessel from the upper thigh region.
The blood loss could be stopped quickly once the catheter was removed after the procedure. By pressing the blood vessel against the wrist bone, the blood leak through the puncture could be arrested. This was not possible in the conventional approach because there was quite a gap between the blood vessel and the bone in the thigh. The other advantages of the transradial approach, over the conventional one, were shorter hospital stay and lesser cost.
Dr. Abhaichand said that about 30,000 transradial angiogram (mapping the heart to detect blocks in blood vessels) and angioplasty had been done at his hospital since it was introduced there in 2001.The teleconference helped showcase the expertise here before a gathering of experts in the field. They had met in Thailand for the “East Meets West Cardiology, 2008” congress. It was co-organised by The Heart Association of Thailand. The Mayo Clinic in the U.S. had also collaborated with the organisers to conduct the meeting.
