Guwahati: Doctors at the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) have successfully performed a minimally invasive trans-catheter tricuspid valve repair (TTVR) on a 27-year-old woman with severe heart valve leakage and advanced right-sided heart failure, marking a first for eastern India.
According to NEIGRIHMS, the patient had developed severe tricuspid valve regurgitation and intractable right-sided heart failure years after undergoing open-heart surgery for a congenital heart defect. A second open-heart surgery was considered to carry a high risk of complications and mortality.
The procedure was carried out by a multidisciplinary Heart Team led by Prof. Animesh Mishra, Head of the Department of Cardiology, with Prof. Manish Kapoor and Prof. Amit Malviya, in collaboration with the Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery (CTVS) and Anaesthesia departments. Technical support was provided by Meril Life Sciences.
The trans-catheter procedure lasted nearly three hours, and the patient is recovering in the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit (ICCU), the institute said.
NEIGRIHMS said the intervention is the first trans-catheter tricuspid valve repair of its kind to be performed in eastern India. According to the institute, only eight such procedures have been carried out in the country so far.
The institute also said the procedure was performed on one of the youngest patients in India to undergo the intervention and was completed at less than half the cost typically incurred elsewhere in the country.
Prof. Mishra said the procedure offered a minimally invasive treatment option for patients for whom conventional surgery carries a high risk.
“For these subsets of patients, conventional surgery carried an extremely high risk. By successfully performing this complex trans-catheter valve repair, we were able to offer a life-saving, minimally invasive treatment that is available only at a few select centres across India,” he said.
NEIGRIHMS Director Prof. Nalin Mehta congratulated the multidisciplinary team, saying the achievement strengthens the institute’s role in delivering advanced and affordable cardiac care in the region.