Six heart patients get new lease of lifeSix patients who would normally need open heart surgery for chronically blocked arteries had procedures in Hamilton this week, which opened the arteries using methods pioneered by the Japanese.
So successful were the operations on three Bay of Plenty, one Thames and two Hamilton patients that Waikato Hospital’s clinical director of cardiology Dr Gerry Devlin is keen to see the methods used by cardiologists here in New Zealand.
Dr Devlin said the Japanese were at the forefront of the technique.
“They have a success rate of more than 90 per cent in patients who might otherwise have open heart surgery. This type of complex angioplasty should be done here. The new technique is safer, more successful and quicker,” he said.
Each procedure took about 90 minutes.
| 
L-r Dr Ryuzo Hayashi, Dr Chris Nunn, cardiac nurse Denise Rannala and Dr Satoru Sumitsuji midway through one of the procedures.
Picture: Waikato DHB.
|
New Zealand cardiologists more commonly use angioplasty, a technique
used to dilate an area of narrowing in an artery, with a high success
rate. Completely blocked, rather than narrowed arteries, are much
harder to treat by this method with success rates much less at around
50 per cent. Current practice is to approach the blockage,
known as a chronic total occlusion, from above, but this often fails
and many patients then have no option but to undergo a Coronary Artery
Bypass Graft. The Japanese technique also includes an approach to open the blockage via small channels arising from other coronary arteries. World-renowned
cardiologist Dr Satoru Sumitsuji, the director of the Tokushukai
Hospital heart centre in Nozaki, Japan presided over a two-day workshop
involving nine cardiologists from the Midland region and one from
Wellington, at Braemar Hospital this week. Waikato DHB’s
visual communications unit video-relayed the operations, with the
patients’ consent, so other clinicians could see the procedures live to
watch and learn the innovative procedure. More information on Cardiology. ENDS
Date: 16 September 2010
Contact:
Mary Anne Gill
Communications Director
Waikato District Health Board
021 705 213
|
