INNOVATION HOLDS THE KEY: P.V.A. Mohandas, founder, MIOT Hospitals (right), K. Sivakumar, chief paediatric cardiologist, and Mallika Mohandas, chairperson, MIOT Hospitals (left), with a Sri Lankan child at a symposium in Chennai on Friday. — Photo: S. S. Kumar

CHENNAI: If you close your eyes and imagine an immensely intricate network of roads, all leading to national highways, you've probably got as close as is possible for a lay person to imagine the criss-cross of paths in the human body.

A well connected network of arteries and veins are embedded in the body, rushing bad blood to the heart and good blood from it. Years ago, as doctors watched the blood coursing through the arteries and veins, running through nearly the length and breadth of the body, they wondered whether they could not use the paths to get to vital organs, make corrections and heal.

From that thought, the field of interventional radiology was born. And from interventional radiology came pinhole surgery.

As unveiled on Friday by MIOT Hospital founder P.V.A. Mohan Das, it utilises this network of arteries and veins to access every part of the body. The idea is to intervene through a pinhole, obviating the need for conventional surgery.

He explained the procedure: with the aid of imaging techniques, interventional radiologists channel small tubes (catheters), as thick as a strand of hair, through arteries or veins from a pinhole puncture on the skin. These tubes can take stents and balloons to cure heart defects, close abnormal channels and dilate blood vessels and valves.

Pinhole surgery was the result of innovation, P. Murari, adviser to the president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said at the inaugural meeting on Friday.

Many advantages

K. Shivakumar, chief paediatric cardiologist, MIOT Centre for Children's Cardiac Care, said the method had many advantages over the conventional open-and-sew surgery, and even over its immediate predecessor — the keyhole surgery. It would cause the least damage to blood vessels, nerves, muscles and tendons as no scalpel was required. It would reduce bleeding substantially. General anaesthesia was needed only for brain interventions. The period of hospitalisation and the rate of infection would be reduced. There would be practically no scar.

He went on to elaborate the role of non-surgical interventions in congenital heart diseases. Pinhole surgery would revolutionise the cardiac treatment methods.

K. Murali, interventional radiologist, said the vascular highway could be used, through the pinhole surgery, for a variety of procedures. From correcting blood vessel swellings (aneurysm) in the main arteries that go to the neck and the head to delivering stents and balloons to the heart vessel and attacking tumours to dissolve them, the pinhole surgery had come to the rescue of patients.

Besides replacing the major surgery itself, the pinhole procedure, which removed blockages that increase the risk of bleeding during the conventional surgery, emboldened the surgeon to go ahead even in situations that would have been disastrous for the patient, Dr. Mohan Das said.

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