KIMS doctors perform rare surgery

Dr RK Jain and his team from Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) gave a new lease of life to a 49-year-old Nagesh in a landmark procedure.

The team performed Asia’s First transcatheter tricuspid valve replacement on a patient with previous double valve surgery via the groin vessel on a beating heart, for severe right-side valve leakage (regurgitation) in KIMS Hospital.

Nagesh, a farmer from Adoni in Kurnool district was suffering with breathlessness, abdominal swelling, loss of appetite, swelling of whole body due to water accumulation and significant weight Gain (8Kgs) in past 6 months.

The investigation revealed that he developed right heart failure due to leakage of right side valve, which limited his basic day to day activities.

The medical history of the patient showed that the he underwent double valve replacement surgery in 2004. The team instead of redoing an open-heart valve replacement surgery performed an alternative method of replacing the diseased valve.

Dr RK Jain, director and HOD Cardiology said, “This is a scientific breakthrough and Asia’s first transcatheter tricuspid-valve replacement.

If left untreated it would lead to liver failure due to leak from Tricuspid-valve. The ideal treatment of which is redo open heart valve replacement surgery.

However, these type of patients carries very high risk of complications including death with redo surgery,”

“We suggested alternative method Transcatheter tricuspid valve replacement without the need of high risk open heart surgery.

The patient and his family went ahead with this alternative method on 7th July 2018, the first of its kind in Asia with and is doing well on follow up. Only 40 such surgeries were reported in medical journals around the world.” he added.

Expressing his joy, Nagesh said, “I never imagined that I would recover owing to my rare and complex condition. Today, I am not just fine but am also able to lead a normal life again.”