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Six heart patients get new lease of life
Six heart patients get new lease of
life
Six patients who would normally need
open heart surgery for chronically blocked arteries had
procedures in Hamilton this week, which opened the arteries
using methods pioneered by the Japanese.
So successful were the operations on three Bay of Plenty, one Thames and two Hamilton patients that Waikato Hospital’s clinical director of cardiology Dr Gerry Devlin is keen to see the methods used by cardiologists here in New Zealand.
Dr Devlin said the Japanese were at the forefront of the technique.
“They have a success rate of more than 90 per cent in patients who might otherwise have open heart surgery. This type of complex angioplasty should be done here. The new technique is safer, more successful and quicker,” he said.
Each procedure took about 90 minutes.
New Zealand cardiologists more commonly use angioplasty, a technique used to dilate an area of narrowing in an artery, with a high success rate. Completely blocked, rather than narrowed arteries, are much harder to treat by this method with success rates much less at around 50 per cent.
Current practice is to approach the blockage, known as a chronic total occlusion, from above, but this often fails and many patients then have no option but to undergo a Coronary Artery Bypass Graft
The Japanese technique also includes an approach to open the blockage via small channels arising from other coronary arteries.
World-renowned cardiologist Dr Satoru Sumitsuji, the director of the Tokushukai Hospital heart centre in Nozaki, Japan presided over a two-day workshop involving nine cardiologists from the Midland region and one from Wellington, at Braemar Hospital this week.
Waikato DHB’s visual communications unit video-relayed the operations, with the patients’ consent, so other clinicians could see the procedures live to watch and learn the innovative procedure.
ENDS
Waikato District Health Board
Healthy People. Excellent Care
Waikato District Health Board (DHB) employs over 6500 people and plans, funds and provides hospital and health services to more than 391,770 people in a region covering eight per cent of New Zealand.
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