Hyderabad: Cardiologists at Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad led by Dr. J. Shiv Kumar, Chief of Cardiology team and Senior Interventional Cardiologist, demonstrated live latest interventional cardiology procedure from Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad for over 4000 interventional cardiologists from all over the world attending the Singapore Live Interventional Cardiology workshop being held at Singapore. The Team demonstrated latest techniques of Critical Left Main Coronary Artery (LMCA) Stenting through OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography) and Drug eluting balloon.

The procedure was performed on a highly critical 70 year old male patient with severe restrictive lung disease and critical left main disease. It was an extremely complex case to undergo an angioplasty. However his condition was unsuitable for a bypass surgery and also long term medication, which is mandatory after implanting stents. Therefore, he was made to undergo an OCT followed by implanting of a Drug eluting balloon. OCT is a path breaking technology available only at Apollo Hospitals in the city and involves insertion of a minute camera through the blood vessels for assessing the internal condition of the vessel. Drug eluting balloon ensures regular eluting of doses drug within the vessels to prevent restenosis or blocking of the vessels. This patient who was in no condition to take regular medicines benefitted from the drug eluting balloon. Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad has treated over 100 cases with drug eluting balloon, which is more efficient than the drug eluting stent and the cost of treatment too comes down by 50%. The elite congregation of cardiologists was highly appreciative of Dr. Shiv Kumar and his team for demonstrating the procedure on a highly risky patient, successfully.

Singapore Live Interventional Cardiology workshop is a prestigious, annual event held to exchange, demonstrate and teach the latest skills and technology relating to care of cardiac patients. This conference is popularly known as ‘ASIA PCR’ as it highlights the achievements of Cardiologists of South Asian Countries.

From among a host of elite hospitals across India and other countries, Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad was bestowed with the signature honor of being selected to participate in the meet, the only hospital from South India. This was in recognition of the vast clinical experience and technical expertise of the Cardiology team in the domain of Interventional Cardiology at the hospital. A telecast of the Interventional procedure performed at Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad was beamed live across many continents and was watched by over 4000 Interventional Cardiologists world-wide.

Dr. J. Shiv Kumar, points out that unlike in the past when Indian Doctors were spectators to cases being performed outside the country, the live intervention session from Apollo Hospitals Secunderabad broke new ground with a large contingent of foreign delegates witnessing complex coronary intervention being performed in our country.

Dr. Shiv Kumar also highlighted the extremely good work being done by Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad in the area of emergency angioplasties. Emergency Angioplasty involves patient being treated with angioplasty at the time of heart attack, instead of being stabilized with thrombolysis first and being made to undergo angioplasty, as is done currently. He said emergency angioplasty is superior to any treatment, beneficial to the patient and the survival rate is much better. Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad is one of the leading centers in the country performing Emergency angioplasties, he added. Another area in which Apollo Hospital, Secunderabad has taken a lead is in performing CRTs (Cardiac Resychronisation Therapy) for heart enlargement patients. The existing option of treatment for such patients is heart transplantation, which is extremely rare in our country and highly risky. CRT can avoid heart transplantation.

This hospital is equipped with the state of the art cardiac equipment in the Cath Lab including FFR (Fractional Flow Reserve), IVUS (Intra Vascular Ultrasound), OCT (Optimal Coherence Tomography), EP (Electrophysiology) Lab and the latest flat panel Cath Lab system.

Apollo Hospitals, Secunderabad has the credit of performing maximum number of successful Primary Angioplasties/ CRT – deployment and stands in the top position for performing maximum left main coronary interventions in India.