PRINCE KUMAR
Ranchi, Feb 16: The Cardio-Thoracic Vascular Surgery (CTVS) department of Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) Ranchi has successfully performed open-heart surgeries of two patients in two consecutive days for the first time in its history.
The two consecutive surgeries were conducted on 19-year-old Kajal Kumari, a resident of Giridih, and 42-year-old Pinky Pandey, a resident of Jamshedpur, providing a fresh lease of life to both.
According to Dr. Rakesh Kumar Choudhary, Kajal Kumari was suffering from severe mitral regurgitation with moderate ‘mitral stenosis’ and severe ‘pulmonary arterial hypertension.’
“On examination, we found that the chordal apparatus was having a tear and the subvalvular apparatus was severely deceased with thickened anterior mitral leaflet. On further examination it was found that the posterior mitral leaflet was also deceased and the left atrium was hugely enlarged with the size of 8 cm, which normally remains of 3 cm,” Choudhary said.
“We took the challenge and did the definitive surgery by replacing the diseased mitral valve with a mechanical one and preserved the subvalvular of the patient. Now the patient is out of danger and will be discharged soon,” Choudhary added.
“We did this surgery on Monday and again on Tuesday we did another minimally invasive heart surgery, back to back for the time in the history of RIMS in the department of CTVS,” Choudhary further said.
“This is the welcome influence of Dr. Vineet Mahajan who gave us the confidence with the motive that in the existing infrastructure we can do much more innovative and difficult cardiac surgery at RIMS. We hope that a huge number of people get benefitted from this attitude and time will come shortly where no patient will be referred outside Jharkhand for cardiothoracic surgery,” Choudhary further added.
Dhirendra Deo, the father of Kajal Kumari said that for the past one year he has been looking towards the private hospital for treatment but in the absence of money the surgery could not be completed.
“I had come to RIMS with a hope of getting my daughter well again and Dr. Rakesh is like a god for us as he has treated my daughter totally free of cost,” he said.
On the other hand, it was also for the very first time that minimally invasive heart surgery was done on Pinky Pandey to close the hole in her heart by making a small incision on the right side of the chest.
Head of the CTVS department, Dr. Vineet Mahajan said that the patient Pinky Pandey had ASD closure for a hole in the heart.
“A small incision was made in the right side of the chest to reach the heart and after the heart was stopped for 30 minutes, the hole was closed. The patient was also extubated (taken out of the ventilator) just after the surgery in the operation theatre. Usually, in the case of open-heart surgery, it takes 1-2 days for the patient to be extubated, but in this case, due to a less invasive procedure, it was taken out of the ventilator immediately after the operation,” Dr. Mahajan said.
Minimally invasive heart surgery involves making small incisions in the chest to reach the heart between the ribs, rather than cutting through the breastbone, as is done in open-heart surgery.
The potential benefits of minimally invasive heart surgery, when compared with open-heart surgery, can include less blood loss, lower risk of infection, reduced trauma and pain, shorter time in the hospital, faster recovery and quicker return to normal activities and smaller and less noticeable scar.
The department of CTVS at RIMS was started in 2012 but many doctors who had joined the department left the institute due to infrastructural shortcomings. In 2017, Dr. Rakesh Choudhary and Dr. Anshul Kumar joined as a faculty after which the operation theatre was commissioned in October 2018 which opened the doors for vascular surgeries in the department. However, the first open-heart surgery was conducted in February 2019 when doctors of CTVS along with the assistance of two experts from PGI Chandigarh conducted the first open-heart surgery.
