Chronic Total Occlusion angioplasty saves heart patient in Pune

At a workshop on ‘Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO)’ organised by the cardiology department of Jehangir Hospital and Research Centre on Thursday, a procedure was performed on a 48-year-old woman saving her from bypass surgery.

This was done using similar technique that was being
discussed at the workshop.

Dr JS Dugal, the hospital’s cardiology department head, said, “Blockages in the heart vary in forms, shapes, sizes and locations from a single block to multiple blocks in the same vessel. Also the degree of blockage varies from patient to patient.”

On Thursday, the patient, Surekha (name changed) approached the cardiology team with a total blocked vessel. The doctors attending the workshop decided that the blockage could be removed with CTO using special angioplasty techniques. “We did it successfully,” said Dugal.

The chief guest for the workshop was Dr Alfredo Galassi, professor of cardiology at the University of Catania, Italy.

Explaining Surekha’s case and the procedure, Dugal said, “CTO is considered as the last frontier in cardiac intervention. The success of angioplasty in such cases depends upon specialised training, experience and innovative devices designed specifically for CTOs. In Surekha’s case the complexity was high because of the multiple complications.”