An 83-years-old gentle man was admitted with recurrent fainting (loss of consciousness) and breathlessness. On evaluation he was found to have severe calcific aortic stenosis. This is a heart disease where one of the valves, which connect the left ventricle with the aorta was tightly stenosed. In simple words, the exit gate of the left side of heart was almost blocked so that oxygenated blood was unable to go the major blood pipe at the speed which is required. When such patient do slightest exertion blood flow to the brain decreases and he will get fainting attack, which is sometimes deadly. Coronary arteries also got less blood flow and he will get chest pain (angina) and even heart attack. The blood in the lungs get stuck and causes breathlessness.This is one of the very fatal(deadly) diseases which should be immediately treated.
The treatment is simply replacing the damaged aortic valve called "Aortic Valve Replacement (AVR)". This was usually done by open heart surgery.
But in many patients like very elderly, with other severe comorbidities open heart surgery is considered as high risk. Recently with the advancement of science, this procedure can be done by catheter intervention only, without need of open heart surgery. This is called " Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation/Replacement ( TAVI/ TAVR).TAVI has revolutionised modern day cardiac intervention in terms of its usefulness and benefits in elderly high risk patients.
Happy to share that we have done TAVI successfully using balloon expandable valve- MyVal in this 83-years-old gentleman. Needless to say that he was discharged home within 2 to 3 days of the procedure. Now he was able to do all his works without any symptoms.
We are happy that we have done this complex procedure at AMRI Hospital, Bhubaneswar. I thank Dr Biswajit Mohapatra, CTVS surgeon, Dr V. Chowdhury and Dr B. Rath, cardiac anesthesiologists and entire cathlab team, CCU team for this wonderful achievement.