After liver graft, man gets heart surgery done

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Follow us:WhatsappFacebookTwitterTelegram.cls-1{fill:#4d4d4d;}.cls-2{fill:#fff;}Google NewsThe year 2012 hasn’t been too kind on 74-year-old Subramaniam Raju from Andhra. After he was wrongly diagnosed with a skin condition, the drugs he took nearly killed him by destroying his liver. “It was a very difficult time when we were hoping to get a cadaver liver for transplant,” he admits, after he checked into the Global Hospital early this year. Eventually, two months ago, as Dr Mohamed Rela geared up to conduct what would eventually be a successful liver transplant, they found that an angiogram showed a block in his heart valve.“We figured that he needed the liver transplant more at that point of time, so we put a stent in and handed him over for the liver surgery,” explains Dr Sandeep Attawar, Director of Heart Surgery, Transplantation and Minimally-Invasive Cardiac Surgery at Global Hospitals. Two weeks ago, he returned to the hospital after suffering a prolonged heart attack. “He had coronary artery disease (CAD) and needed surgery instantly, but his blood sugar level was quite high,” recalls the doctor.In essence, what is a simple surgery - the harvest of the internal mammary artery and the connecting tissue to the anterior descending artery - should have been easy for normal people. But for Raju, doctors couldn’t even think of doing an open-chest surgery. “He had just been closed up after his liver surgery and we had found that his bones were extremely brittle. They would have crackled like paper when we sawed through the rib cage,” explains Attawar, as to why they chose to go with the minimally-invasive ThoraCAB/MIDCAB procedure.Doctors managed to repair the damaged sections of the elderly man’s heart through a minute six-cm incision on the side of the chest. It was such a success that Raju was the toast of the day when Global launched their centre for minimally-invasive cardiac surgery recently, in the presence of their Chairman and MD Dr K Ravindranath. “We believe that this will not only reduce patient costs, but also bring down their stay in the hospital,” he said.first published:September 15, 2012, 09:19 ISTlast updated:September 15, 2012, 09:19 IST
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The year 2012 hasn’t been too kind on 74-year-old Subramaniam Raju from Andhra. After he was wrongly diagnosed with a skin condition, the drugs he took nearly killed him by destroying his liver. “It was a very difficult time when we were hoping to get a cadaver liver for transplant,” he admits, after he checked into the Global Hospital early this year. Eventually, two months ago, as Dr Mohamed Rela geared up to conduct what would eventually be a successful liver transplant, they found that an angiogram showed a block in his heart valve.

“We figured that he needed the liver transplant more at that point of time, so we put a stent in and handed him over for the liver surgery,” explains Dr Sandeep Attawar, Director of Heart Surgery, Transplantation and Minimally-Invasive Cardiac Surgery at Global Hospitals. Two weeks ago, he returned to the hospital after suffering a prolonged heart attack. “He had coronary artery disease (CAD) and needed surgery instantly, but his blood sugar level was quite high,” recalls the doctor.

In essence, what is a simple surgery - the harvest of the internal mammary artery and the connecting tissue to the anterior descending artery - should have been easy for normal people. But for Raju, doctors couldn’t even think of doing an open-chest surgery. “He had just been closed up after his liver surgery and we had found that his bones were extremely brittle. They would have crackled like paper when we sawed through the rib cage,” explains Attawar, as to why they chose to go with the minimally-invasive ThoraCAB/MIDCAB procedure.

Doctors managed to repair the damaged sections of the elderly man’s heart through a minute six-cm incision on the side of the chest. It was such a success that Raju was the toast of the day when Global launched their centre for minimally-invasive cardiac surgery recently, in the presence of their Chairman and MD Dr K Ravindranath. “We believe that this will not only reduce patient costs, but also bring down their stay in the hospital,” he said.