The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Three-vessel coronary bypass performed

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 25, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Three-vessel coronary bypass performed

Staff Reporter

This rare heart surgery was reported only twice in the world

CHENNAI: When a 50-year-old patient from Guntur was wheeled into the operation theatre at MIOT a couple of weeks ago, the team of cardio-thoracic surgeons had three complicated issues to resolve — 90 per cent narrowing of the left main coronary artery, a near-total occlusion of the right artery, a large aneurysm (bulge in the blood vessel) and a leak in the aortic valve.

At the end of a six-hour surgery, the team led by V.V. Bashi had successfully completed a three vessel coronary bypass that has been reported only twice in the world (one in the U.S. and another in Japan).

The major open heart surgery involved three bypass grafts, repairing the leak in the aortic valve and replacing the aneurysm with an artificial graft.

After the patient was put on heart-lung machine and his blood cooled to 16 degrees C, blood supply to the vital organs was suspended for an hour. During this period, surgeons stitched tube grafts of 20 cm length to replace the diseased aorta. The blood vessels supplying to the brain were then stitched on to this graft and blood circulation was resumed. The valve leak was also rectified before the patient was disconnected from the heart-lung machine.

The surgical team included Srinivas Babu and A. K. Baburajan, cardiac surgeons and Aju Jacob, anaesthetist.

Shanthi Prakash from Guntur had been suffering from breathlessness and chest pain since December 2005.

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