Bengaluru: Columbia Asia Hospital, Sarjapur performs rare heart surgery on US citizen

Bellevision Media Network

Bengaluru, 10 Oct: Jim aged 58 from California, was on business trip to India. On reaching Bangalore the fever that has subsided before his travel flared up again and he was immediately fetched to Columbia Asia Hospital, Sarjapur Road, here.

 

Jim was initially administered by the general physicians and after a series of medical examinations; he was diagnosed from Diseases Aortic Valve. He knew he had a heart valve problem, but never worried because it never affected it. Jim a marathon runner had also participated in a race back home, a month before.

 

 

Blood culture reports indicated that the bacteria’s had already started developing in the blood and a re-valuation of the heart revealed a very significant aortic valve incompetence. The whole lot of blood which was being pumped out of the heart was falling back into the heart causing a severe strain on the heart. Because of this, there was fluid collecting in his lungs and the other organs weren’t receiving getting enough blood, resulting in gradual failure of the kidneys and liver.

 

Now it was apparent that the infection was destroying the valve and the heart muscles and the antibiotics given would not clear the infection unless source within the heart was removed. This meant undergoing an open heart surgery to replace the infected and destroyed valve and its surrounding tissue. This was a tough call for the cardiac surgical team, on one hand; if they waited to see whether the antibiotics worked, the kidney and liver failure would worsen making the post-surgery recovery difficult. On the other hand, if they went in and operated, there was a good chance that the valve they replaced would also get infected and patient would be worse off.

 

However, Dr Joseph Xavier, the chief cardiac surgeon, from his vast experience over the last 25 years, felt its better to ward off the postoperative organ failure and take a chance with recurrence of infection. The decision paid off, Jim had a successful operation, with the replacement of the valve the heart and kidney and liver functions recovered and Jim returned to the USA.