NEIGRIHMS doctors successfully perform beating heart valve replacement

SHILLONG: A team of doctors at the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) here has successfully conducted a minimally invasive beating heart valve replacement on a 36 year-old patient.

"In this particular case apart from the Minimally Invasive the entire operation was performed in beating heart without allowing it to stop during the surgery," NEIGRIHMS spokesperson Dr M Saikia said in a statement.

Though beating heart coronary by-pass surgery is common these days but beating heart valve surgery is relatively a newer concept and performed in very few selected centers in the country, he said.

The patient, hailing from Assam's Jorhat district, was suffering from rheumatic heart diseases and one of the valves in his heart was severely narrowed leading to tiredness affecting his normal day to day activity.

A team of cardiac surgeons from NEIGRIHMS under the leadership of Institute's director Prof A G Ahangar and Prof Manuj Kr Saikia who heads the cardiology department and a host of other members took stock of the health condition and decided to perform the surgery, Dr Saikia said.

The uniqueness of this operation was that the entire operative approach to the heart is not through the midline instead lateral to the chest with a small opening without cutting any bone and not allowing the heart to stop temporarily.

NEIGRIHMS boasts of having a cardiac surgery department which is performing all kinds of open heart surgeries catering to all age group of patients with varied heart ailments in the entire north eastern states.