Shimla: Rare Medical Procedure Performed

In the first case of its kind, a Cardiologist from the Indra Gandhi Medical College performed a rare percutaneous stent graft without bypass surgery on an elderly patient on Thursday.

Senior Medical Superintendent of IGMC, Dr. Jankraj, informed media persons this afternoon about this development.

Also Read: Rare Transcatheter Mitral valve-in-valve implantation performed on 78-year-old at Aster RV Hospital

This patient turned up in the hospital on Dec 31 with complaints of abdomen pain, he was evaluated in the department of surgery.

On examination, his abdomen was found to have an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), which is a dilation of the main artery aorta and a fatal complication of heart or a rare disease.

"If the patient would not be operated in time for this dangerous disease, the artery could rupture any time and it may cause sudden death," said Dr. Raj.

This patient was sent to the CTVS department where surgery by opening up the abdomen was attempted but due to a large amount of adhesions, it was not successful.

It was then the surgeons approached Dr. Rajeev Marwaha in the department of cardiology, to attempt closure of the aneurysm without surgery.

The department planned this rare procedure before re-evaluating the patient and another CT was performed.

"The team faced many hurdles before they went ahead, like a scarce supply of stents, the problem of availability of trained technicians who came from Mumbai, and the requirement of finance since the minimum costs for this stent and its grafting comes to around five lakh rupees beyond the capacity of the patient to afford the same," Dr. Jankraj said.

The patient is under HIMCARE, where he had some money but the extra amount required was provided by the patient's local MLA and chiefship of Vidhan Sabha, Mr. Narender Bragata.

This case was performed today, under local anesthesia, the artery of the left femoral artery route was used and as planned two stents were placed and the aneurysm closed.

The final result was very successful and the patient is doing fine. He will be discharged after two days.

He said that a 66-year-old farmer of village Tangnu Chirgaon, Rohru of this district underwent this rare medical procedure and this was the first time such rare stent grafting was performed in Himachal Pradesh.

Also Read: Successful outcome of a nephron-sparing surgery in a solitary kidney with multiple renal masses