Muscat: The Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH) doctors have successfully carried out an advanced procedure for aortic valve replacement on four patients aged over 75, according to a press release on Saturday.
The procedure, called trans catheter aortic valve replacement/implantation (TAVI), is a minimally invasive approach to implant an artificial heart valve inside a constricted aortic valve. This approach is for patients who are at too high a risk for conventional aortic valve replacement surgery. This is the first time that this heart valve replacement procedure has been done in any hospital in Oman.
Dr Ali Bin Saud Al Bimani, Vice Chancellor of SQU, later visited the four patients who underwent TAVI at SQU Hospital the other day.
Dr Hilal Al Sabti, cardiac surgeon and deputy director general of SQU Hospital for Clinical Affairs and the team leader of the team, said that during the valve replacement procedure, the physician inserts the catheter (a tube) through an artery in the groin (trans femoral approach) or a small incision between the ribs (trans apical approach).
“The artificial valve is compressed and fed through the catheter until it reaches the aortic valve. A balloon expands the artificial valve within the patient’s diseased aortic valve and the catheter is removed,” he added.
“The new valve replaces the old, increasing blood flow throughout the body. Trans catheter techniques allow our team to perform the valve replacement procedure while the patient’s heart is still beating, eliminating the need for a bypass machine and its associated risks,” he explained.
Dr Adil Al Kindi, cardiac surgeon at SQU Hospital, said the conventional procedure, or open heart surgery requires stopping the heart and putting the patient on a heart lung machine until the replacement is done.
“The incision is also quite large down the centre of the sternum. Usually conventional open heart surgery is not advisable for patients who are at high risk due to old age and other factors. TAVI involves only catheter-based procedure with the help of fluoroscopy to avoid large incisions,”, he said. T
he physicians said that a conventional open heart surgery takes at least four to six hours whereas TAVI is often completed in less than two hours.
