Dubai: Cardiac specialists in the UAE welcomed the use of the Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) as a major advancement in the field of cardiac surgery in the country.
Dr Girish Chandra Varma, chief cardiac surgeon at NMC Speciality Hospital, Dubai, told Gulf News: “The LVAD has been used widely in Europe and USA since the last eight years. The earlier versions were implanted inside with the pump being external.
However, the new LVAD implants are extremely sophisticated collapsible devices that can be placed in the pericardial cavity and can replace the work of the Left Ventricle in case of a LV failure.”
The first LVAD was implanted only eight years ago in an individual and there is no literature to prove it can provide beyond eight years so far.
Conventionally around the world the LVAD implant is used as a bridging device for heart failure patients waiting for transplants. “At best, LVADs are considered to be bridging devices which gives a patient of heart failure a lease of life until he can get a transplant.” Obviously the number of hearts available for transplant are far less than the number of patients awaiting the procedure. So LVADs have proved to be very effective in providing cardiac disease patients a new hope of life.
In the UAE where cardio vascular disease (CVD) is the second largest cause of death after road accidents, the use of these implantations bode well for end-stage heart patients, said Dr Obaid Jassimi, head of the cardiothoracic surgery at Dubai Hospital. “It is a very advanced cardiac procedure and required very skilled surgeons who can do excellent preparation, assess patients and also take excellent post-operative care as the procedure is fraught with challenges such as post-operative bleeding or coagulation, fluctuations in blood pressure and so on.”
Dr Arun Kumar Goyal, consultant cardiac surgeon at RAK Hospitals expressed scepticism about the device’s affordability to the common man. “While this device is very good for end-stage heart failure as it can extend life of a patient waiting for a transplant. Eventually a patient will need a new heart. However, its costs are prohibitive. In India LVADs cost approximately Rs10 million (Dh575,000). I am not sure of its price here and if it is anywhere close to this amount, I am not sure which insurance would cover the costs of implanting such an expensive device. It can help the wealthy, but is beyond the reach of the common man,” he said.
