Ministry of Health Announces Tamil Nadu to be the pioneering state in the country for Heart Valve Treatments
The ministry of health headed by hon’ble health minister Dr C Vijaybaskar, presided a public awareness programme on heart valve replacements without open heart surgery called TAVI on 27th February at Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super-speciality Hospital, Omandurar. This was the first awareness programme in the country conducted by patients for patients to spread awareness on newer heart valve treatments without open surgery.
Heart Valves

The commonest valve abnormality due to age related degeneration is narrowing of the aortic valve. This is referred to as aortic stenosis (Figure: 2).
The aortic valve is the main valve through which blood has to get out to the rest of the body. Narrowing of this valve leads to significant symptoms and the best definitive treatment for this condition is replacement of the aortic valve with a new artificial valve. This is done surgically through open heart surgery. This is very well established and efficacy proven treatment for aortic stenosis.

This is now a well established treatment in the world and is the first line treatment for many specific valve diseases and patients. This allows most patients to have their valve replacement and walk out of hospital in 3-5 days time.

TAVI Procedure Illustration

Tamil Nadu government becomes the first state government in the entire country to start these treatments in the government sector.
The government of Tamil Nadu in an effort to start such treatments has signed a contract with India’s pioneer in heart valve replacements without open surgery Dr A B Gopalamurugan, senior consultant interventional cardiologist and chief of endovascular treatments at HeartTeam India, Kauvery Hospital, Chennai to lead this programme.

Through a public-private partnership, specialists have been nominated to render such treatments in the government sector. The officials today confirmed that Dr A B Gopalamurugan who introduced such treatments to India and Tamilnadu, has done one of the maximum valve replacement procedures without open surgery called TAVI in India.
The Health minister today appreciated Dr Gopalamurugan and Dr Prashant Vaijyanath of HeartTeam India who have done several first in the world treatments and several first in India treatments to come forward to initiate such treatments in the government sector to help the needy.

The procedures were performed by Dr A B Gopalamurugan and Dr Prashant Vaijyanath from HeartTeam India, Kauvery Hospital, Chennai along with the team at Omandurar Dr G Karthikeyan, head of department for cardiology, Dr Parthasarathy, head of the department for Anaesthesia, Dr Manohar, head of the department for cardiac surgery and allied professionals. Speaking at the event, the officials confirmed that the procedures were performed completely free of cost through the government scheme.
The coordination at Omandurar was led by Dr Anand, Nodal officer at Omandurar hospital who was congratulated by the health minister.
At a speech by the Director of Omandurar Hospital Dr Umanath IAS, he concluded that its a great step forward for the Government Hospital and the people of Tamil Nadu and he thanked the Health Minister for making such treatments possible in the Government sector and for becoming the first state government in the country to perform TAVI.
Many elderly patients who require valve replacements are unaware that such treatments like TAVI exists that does not require open heart surgery and that they can recover much quicker with less risk. To spread awareness, many patients who have had TAVI across the state of Tamil Nadu and Kerala came forward today to share their experiences after such TAVI procedures.
There were several patients who had undergone previous heart valve surgery through conventional open surgery who later required a second valve replacement. Such patients had also been treated with a TAVI procedure thereby negating the need for a second open heart surgery. Present at the event were several patients who have had valve replacements without open surgery (TAVI) including India’s youngest patient, India’s oldest patient, India’s first mitral valve replacement, Actor Kathadi Ramamurthy and others who were all treated by Dr A B Gopalamurugan successfully over the years. They shared their experiences and how they have had valve replacement without surgery and got discharged in just 2 days.
No comments:
Post a Comment