CHENNAI: Considering that only two people with dissecting aneurysm in the aorta walk into the hospital in a month, it must have been very much like a marathon when MIOT Hospitals received two cases on the same day. "When people are diagnosed with this problem of the heart, we usually defer other surgery and get them into the OR as soon as we can," explained Dr V V Bashi, head of the cardio-thoracic unit there and the man who performed both operations.How they landed two cases is a story by itself. Doctors in Vijayawada apparently diagnosed 32-year-old Sowjanya with a dissecting aneurysm after she presented the usual symptoms – terrible chest pain, difficulty in breathing and a backache. "There was a slight delay in her diagnosis as she had given birth just two weeks prior to that. In any case, they decided to rush her over in a special ambulance and we began prepping for the surgery," said the experienced cardiac surgeon.As the woman with the ailing aorta was hurried along on the 550-km road trip, disaster struck. "Her bleeding increased and she needed to be stabilised in a hospital before continuing the journey," said Dr Bashi. It was a good thing they began prepping early – just as they were about to put their feet up in view of the six-hour delay caused by Sowjanya's condition, another call came in. “A hypertensive man from Erode who had come to town for a funeral had suddenly felt acute chest pain and was referred to us after it was confirmed that he had the same condition,” said the doctor, reliving that night last month. As it was late in the afternoon, the surgical team took up the challenge and began operating on 50-year-old Srinivasan first.While his surgery was relatively standard and sections of the coronary artery, ascending aorta, proximal arch and aortic valve were replaced, the operation still took over five hours. “Just as we finished, Sowjanya was brought in. We had to do something of a repeat,” Bashi recalled with a smile.It wasn't to be so, they discovered, after they opened up her chest. “She had had a heart attack caused by a block in the left main coronary artery,” he said and added that that was a lot more complex.Barely two weeks later, looking at the two smiling patients, it is a little hard to believe that they survived a heart ailment with a mortality rate of 50 per cent worldwide; bound to be significantly higher in India. “I did both the operations myself and it took a toll on the team, but perhaps it will be easier in future if people could come in and get diagnosed within the 'golden hour',” concluded Bashi.
Comments
0 comment