This article is a part of World Heart Week series in association with Kauvery Hospital.
The machine is called a ‘Hybrid Cath Lab in a sterile Operating Room with a Flex Arm’.
Agreed, that’s a lot of jargon for you to understand immediately, and we are going to explain what it is in just a bit. But here is the one thing you need to know – this machine, brought to India for the first time ever by Kauvery Hospital in Chennai, has made complex cardiac procedures a lot safer for patients in and around the city.
Heart attacks are common these days, we all know people who have suffered one. But the treatments of heart attacks are not fully understood. For one, they are not all the same. The traditional way to repair a heart is an open-heart surgery – where the chest is opened and the arteries or valves in the hearts are fixed surgically. But over the past few year, transcatheter methods – treating the heart without opening the chest and instead using catheter tubes – are also picking up. There are also patients who might need both kinds of treatments, open-heart and transcatheter.
Further, most cardiac patients come with co-morbidities, that is, they also have other conditions. For instance, about 40% of cardiac patients have diabetes or renal diseases.
“This is where a machine like the Hybrid Cath Lab OR helps. It allows us to do surgeries and other procedures in the same operating room without shifting the patient or equipment of the surgical team, and it makes the process safer and faster,” says Dr KP Suresh Kumar, Senior Consultant Interventional Cardiologist, Kauvery Hospital.
So, what is a Hybrid Cath Lab Operating Room? Simply put, it is an imaging system with superior quality. It helps the doctors look inside the heart with a lot more clarity and in several dimensions, making it easier to operate on you.
“It’s an amazing, state-of-the-heart system of image-guided therapy. We can do lot of new things which we couldn’t do earlier,” says Dr Suresh Kumar. The machine takes multiples cardiac images from different angles and combines them all to give a better picture of the heart. “The image quality is excellent,” says the doctor.
The machine’s touch screen monitor also allows doctors to zoom into specific areas of the heart, an “area of interest” where the procedure needs to be done, so the doctor can see clearly. This is called localised image enhancement.
There are multiple advantages of a better imaging system. For one, with better visibility, the doctors can reduce the possibility of blood vessel damage and have more control over the outcome. The quality of outcome of procedures also improves drastically.
“Also, with this machine, procedures take a lot lesser time. We can do a coronary angiogram in just 5 minutes and an angioplasty in 40-45 minutes. This means more people can be treated in a day,” the doctor says excitedly. The navigation of the machine is also easier thanks to the advanced technology, the doctor adds.
Another way in which this machine makes procedures easier for patients is the minimal use of contrast used during angioplasty. During an angiogram or angioplasty, a contrast (dye) is injected into the arteries of the patient so an image of the heart can be seen on the screen. Without this machine, a patient might have to be injected multiple times. However, with this machine, multiple images of the heart are taken with a single contrast injection – this is called a rotational scan, so the amount of contrast can be minimised. The risk of renal injury is also reduced.
The Hybrid OR also has a Dynamic Coronary Roadmap System. “You need to use the contrast just once. It becomes a roadmap after that, and the same image can be used further for balloon and stent deployment. This is especially good for patients with kidney issues, as contrast is not good for their health. About 65% of cardiac patients are diabetic, and about 40% have renal problems. Contrast is harmful to their body, so lesser the better,” the doctor points out.
Another important advantage of the machine is how safe it is for doctors and nurses. “The patients are exposed to the radiation only once, but we are in front of the machine every day. Imagine how much radiation we’re exposed to?” the doctor asks, adding, “But this machine has very low radiation exposure and radiation scattering, about 33% less.”
This series was produced by TNM Brand Studio in association with Kauvery Hospital.