Apollo Hospitals Showcases Latest Cardiac Techniques for Cardiologists at Singapore Live-2012

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Secunderabad based Apollo Hospitals, has demonstrated latest techniques of Critical Left Main Coronary Artery (LMCA) Stenting through OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography) and drug eluting balloon for cardiologists at Singapore Live-2012.

 (PressReleasePoint) -
Secunderabad based Apollo Hospitals, has demonstrated latest techniques of Critical Left Main Coronary Artery (LMCA) Stenting through OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography) and drug eluting balloon for cardiologists at Singapore Live-2012.

The workshop was led by Dr J Shiv Kumar, Chief of Cardiology team and senior interventional cardiologist of Apollo Hospital with his team.

Singapore Live Interventional Cardiology workshop is a prestigious, annual event held to exchange, demonstrate and teach the latest skills and technology relating to care of cardiac patients. This is popularly known as ‘ASIA PCR’ as it highlights the achievements of Cardiologists of South Asian Countries.

Dr Shiv Kumar, points out that unlike in the past when Indian Doctors were spectators to cases being performed outside the country, the live intervention session from Apollo Hospitals Secunderabad broke new ground with a large contingent of foreign delegates witnessing complex coronary intervention being performed in our country.

Dr Shiv Kumar also highlighted the extremely good work being done by Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad in the area of emergency angioplasties. Emergency angioplasty involves patient being treated with angioplasty at the time of heart attack, instead of being stabilized with thrombolysis first and being made to undergo angioplasty, as is done currently. He said emergency angioplasty is superior to any treatment, beneficial to the patient and the survival rate is much better. “Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad is one of the leading centres in the country performing emergency angioplasties,” he added. Another area in which Apollo Hospital, Secunderabad has taken a lead is in performing CRTs (Cardiac Resychronisation Therapy) for heart enlargement patients. The existing option of treatment for such patients is heart transplantation, which is extremely rare in our country and highly risky. CRT can avoid heart transplantation.

The procedure was performed on a highly critical 70 year old male patient with severe restrictive lung disease and critical left main disease. It was an extremely complex case to undergo an angioplasty. However his condition was unsuitable for a bypass surgery and also long term medication, which is mandatory after implanting stents. Therefore, he was made to undergo an OCT followed by implanting of a drug eluting balloon. OCT is a path breaking technology available only at Apollo Hospitals in the city and involves insertion of a minute camera through the blood vessels for assessing the internal condition of the vessel. Drug eluting balloon ensures regular eluting of doses drug within the vessels to prevent restenosis or blocking of the vessels. This patient was not in condition to take regular medicines benefitted from the drug eluting balloon.

Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad has treated over 100 cases with drug eluting balloon, which is more efficient than the drug eluting stent and the cost of treatment too comes down by 50%. The elite congregation of cardiologists was highly appreciative of Dr Shiv Kumar and his team for demonstrating the procedure on a highly risky patient, successfully.

Apollo Hospitals was selected from a host of elite hospitals across India and other countries, was bestowed with the signature honour of being selected to participate in the meet, the only hospital from South India. This was in recognition of the vast clinical experience and technical expertise of the Cardiology team in the domain of Interventional Cardiology at the hospital. A telecast of the Interventional procedure performed at Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad was beamed live across many continents and was watched by over 4000 Interventional Cardiologists world-wide.