Unique surgery to treat heart disorder carried out in Russia
Published 09 June, 2009, 02:44
A unique operation has been carried out in Moscow, in Bakulev’s Scientific Center of Cardiovascular Surgery, considered the number one heart center in the world, to treat a life threatening heart rhythm disorder.
Gulnosa Mamatova, 14-years-old, has become the first patient to undergo an operation using a new technique invented by Russian doctors.
Leo Bakeria, the director of the Bakulev’s Center, told NTV channel that Gulnosa had ventricular tachycardia, one of the most dangerous diseases among heart disorders. ”About 80 percent of such patients die suddenly before treatment ever starts,” he said.
Now, after the operation that lasted about one minute and 18 seconds, the girl’s heart beats calm and even, something Gulnosa has not known for the three years she has suffered from the disease.
However, until recently Gulnosa Mamatova’s disease was diagnosed almost intuitively. Doctors used to “provoke” a tachycardia attack by an electric discharge to find the pathologic area in her heart.
Such search for the problem area in the heart used to take much more time than the operation itself.
The new method, a combination of hi-tech, medicine and mathematic, helps save time and avoid painful interventions into a patient’s body systems.
First, with the help of electrodes, which are put on a patient’s body, and computer tomography, doctors receive a clear picture of the heart anatomy. Then, catheters are sent to the problem area via veins to “burn” the pathologic area.
Now, after the first success, the center plans to carry out some 40,000 operations per year.
The new technology is much needed. In Russia, alone, 250,000 sudden deaths due to heart rhythm disorders happen yearly.
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