Tamil Nadu: GMKMCH goes for its Ist open heart valve replacement surgery

Salem: A successful open heart surgery to replace a mitral valve in a 40-year-old woman at the Government Mohan Kumaramangalam Medical College Hospital (GMKMCH) in the city has elevated the hospital into the elite grouping of government hospitals in the State. The hospital was able to achieve success despite limited drug resource, and limited equipment and manpower.

The surgery makes it the third government hospital after the ones in Chennai and Madurai to have successfully performed the surgery.

Done under the Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme, the patient was saved expenditure ranging between Rs 3 and Rs 5 lakh..

Hailing from Manivizhundhan North Pudur village in Attur taluk, Amravati was wheeled in in a critical condition. She was suffering from acute chest pain, palpitation, and severe breathing difficulty said Dean GMCH P Kanagaraj. She was diagnosed with rheumatic heart valve disease.

It was discovered that the patient had severe mitral valve stenosis, wherein the valve narrows and does not allow blood supply into the main pumping chamber of the heart -- the left ventricle. She also had a blocked artery.

Cardio-thoracic surgeons Dr. Pon. A. Rajarajan and Dr. R. Vijay Ananth replaced the valve and removed the arterial block at the Super Speciality branch of the hospital on April 11. The patient is shaping up well and is ready for discharge, the Dean said.

Though well equipped the Cardio Thoracic Department of the GMKMCH, one of the best-equipped intensive care units in the Government Hospital in the State, the authorities at the hospital has had to mobilize about 150 different resources, equipments and medicines to perform open heart surgeries, the Dean said.

The department had so far performed 13 open heart surgeries successfully in the last couple of years, along with 130 angioplasty procedures and 1,500 angiograms.

Dr. Kanagaraj said the success of the valve replacement surgery has motivated the management and the doctors of the hospital to go a step further and perform coronary artery bypass graft procedures for patients with blocks in the heart’s blood vessels.

“We have planned a bypass surgery shortly”, the Dean told the Hindu. “Initiative has already been taken for the procurement of equipment and creating the needed facility for bypass surgery.”