News & RFH Newsletters

Vile Parle resident Gita calls Ajit, a resident of Vasai whom she hadn’t met until a fortnight back, her “hospital twin”.

A medical problem, however, unites them: both were born 31 years ago with congenital heart defects that in recent months worsened their pulmonary valve, making them need replacement. The silver lining here is that they didn’t undergo another open heart surgery, but were the first in western India to get the valve replaced non-surgically.

“In the transcatheter method, we first insert a catheter in the patient’s leg and guide it to the heart,” said cardiologist Dr Maulik Parekh at H N Reliance Hospital in Girgaum. A bioprosthetic pulmonary valve is then sent up through the catheter and placed in the opening between the heart’s upper right chamber and the pulmonary artery.

However, the procedure is challenging because patients who need it have usually undergone open heart surgeries before. “There is a lot of adhesions and extra tissues as a result of their previous operations,” said the doctor. While a normal angioplasty takes less than an hour to perform, the pulmonary valve replacement took 4.5 hours for Ajit, who had undergone three surgeries in the past.

In Gita’s case, the procedure took six hours as she not only had a congenital defect, in which the two main arteries in her heart were transposed, but also her heart points to the right side instead of the left (a condition called dextrocardia).

As for Ajit, a techie with a leading IT company, he used to get so breathless that he needed to catch his breath after climbing stairs. He is happy with the new valve.