SUM CTVS team conducts rare cardiac surgery

Bhubaneswar: For the first time in Odisha, the Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery (CTVS) team at the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital, faculty of Medical Sciences of Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) here, has successfully conducted surgery on two young patients suffering from life threatening aortic disease recently.

“The life threatening condition is associated with very high mortality rate requiring immediate attention and patients die because it takes time to go out of the state to get treatment,” Dr. Debasish Sahu, head of department of CTVS said.

Aortic surgery, a challenging subset of cardiac surgery which now addresses such conditions, has evolved very recently and is available in a few centres across India, he said.

Dr. Sahu said the first such surgery was taken up in IMS and SUM Hospital when they treated Anadi Charan Sahu, a 26-year-old man from Deogarh, deploying the aortic root replacement and arch replacement procedure which spanned for nearly 15 hours.

“The patient was suffering from a genetically predisposed condition (Marfan syndrome) with dissected aortic root which needed quick intervention as the mortality rate is very high in such diseases,” he said adding the team also operated on a second case successfully.

Biswajit Behera, a 22-year-old man, was also suffering from a similar condition and had recovered after undergoing the 8-hour surgery.

Dr. Sahu said the CTVS team comprised Dr. Sushant Kumar Bhoi, Consultant, Cardiac Anesthesia and Dr. Manabhanjan Jena, Cardiac Consultant.

Dr. Bhoi said the two surgeries were extremely challenging but were conducted successfully. Both the patients were treated under the state government sponsored Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana (BSKY) without having to pay any money.

Anadi Charan Sahu and Biswajit Behera said they were feeling much better after undergoing the surgery and were able to function normally. “When I came to the hospital, I was unable to speak and was experiencing chest pain. But now I am feeling normal,” Sahu said.

Prof. (Dr.) Pusparaj Samantasinhar, medical superintendent, said such high-end surgeries were being taken up by the hospital regularly under BSKY.