Man with the iron heart has 12 stents

His cardiac surgeon affectionately calls him “steel-hearted man”. An apt moniker, considering 87-year-old Ram Das (name changed), a South Mumbai businessman, has 12 stents in his heart, the last one placed in a 45-minute procedure on Saturday. His surgeon says Das is among the people with the highest number of heart stents in the country.

“What makes his case unique is the fact that he had a bypass surgery in 1991 and has also had six angioplasties between 2001 and 2009, during which the stents were placed in his arteries,” says Dr BK Goyal, director of cardiology, Bombay Hospital, who operated upon Das.

Das, who does not smoke and does not have diabetes, first showed the symptoms of a weak heart in 1991, when he was 69, and underwent bypass surgery. Ten years later he had a heart attack; an angioplasty was done and two stents were placed in one of his arteries. Two years later four stents were placed in another blocked artery. This was followed by two stents in 2005, one in 2006 and two in 2007.

“I have had patients with five stents, but Das is the one with the highest I’ve come across,” Dr Goyal says.
Cardiac surgeons say 12 is an unusually high figure for stents, simply because patients don’t live long enough to require so many. Affordability is also an issue with each stent costing over Rs1 lakh. “Das is lucky; not only are all his stents functioning, but also he has been able to spend a total of Rs13.50 lakh on the procedures. That’s why I call him a steel-hearted man,” Dr Goyal says.