Doctors at the Madras Medical Mission hospital have been carrying out a non-surgical procedure for sinus venosus defect, a rare congenital heart ailment, for the past four years.
According to a release by the hospital, the condition, which often remained asymptomatic and undetected in early childhood, was conventionally treated through an open heart surgery that had significant morbidity. The recovery time was also longer. Though other methods of treatment evolved in the recent years in western countries, they were expensive and hence were not easily available in India, the release said.
K. Sivakumar, head, Department of Paediatric Cardiology, MMM, said the team designed a non-surgical correction of this complex condition with covered stents and by making use of easily available clinical tools such as transesophageal echocardiography and balloon occlusion test. “The procedure requires hospitalisation for around 48 hours. Recently, a patient with sinus venosus defect, who was a high risk candidate due to morbid obesity, hypertension and metabolic disorder, recovered safely within 24 hours after the procedure,” Dr. Sivakumar said. Pointing out that the hospital had performed 43 such procedures for patients aged six to 70 years, Dr. Sivakumar said that research papers on this procedure were published in journals and the findings were also presented in international conferences.
