Over the last few years number of technical advances have occurred in the medical field which have helped not only in treating critically sick heart patients and improving their survival but also in reducing repeated hospitalizations along with improving their overall quality of life.
Impella heart pump is one such cutting edge technology which has been developed after extensive research and has helped cardiologists to save thousands of lives globally. This technology is now available in India and is proving to be a boon in treating critically sick heart patients. Impella, also known as the smallest heart pump, works by supporting the function of the heart during extremely high-risk angioplasty procedures.
Dr. H K Bali, Chairman, Cardiac Sciences Paras Hospital
Dr H K Bali, Chairman Cardiac Sciences, Paras Group of Hospitals has been able to save the lives of three such patients during the last couple of months, who were unsuitable for surgery due to multiple co-morbidities, complexity of coronary disease and severely compromised heart muscle function. “For all these cases, Impella provided optimum artificial circulatory support by maintaining their stable cardiac status so that high risk interventional procedures could be performed safely which eventually helped them to recover faster with shorter duration of hospitalization,” explained, Dr Bali, who known for his vast experience of more than twenty-five years and eminence in the field of Interventional cardiology.
Talking about one of these patients Dr H K Bali said that Mrs Vidyawati (name changed), 81 years old patient came to Cardiology emergency with heart attack (NSTEMI). On investigation she was found to have critical multiple blockages in all her three coronary arteries along with severely compromised heart muscle function due to a very poor (20%) left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). Her case was discussed in "Heart team" meeting which concluded that surgical risk was prohibitively high. It was decided that the only option to treat all the critically diseased vessels was through Impella supported angioplasty. Procedure was performed under local anesthesia and was entirely percutaneous. Five stents were deployed to treat all the blocks. The patient remained completely stable throughout the procedure despite the extreme complexity of the disease, due to the support provided by Impella as it maintained adequate blood flow to all the critical organs of the body during the entire duration of the procedure. At the completion of the procedure, Impella pump was safely removed from the body.
Dr Bali further explained, “Due to myriad reasons, we now have quite a younger cardiac patients’ population, getting admitted after having massive heart attack and many other people presenting with cardiogenic shock which is a serious medical condition with poor survival percentage. For this kind of extremely difficult situations, technologies like Impella are turning out to be a boon due to the crucial support provided to heart and eventually by improving overall survival and by improvising quality of life of these patients through percutaneous interventions.”
In a nutshell, Impella is a real time example of how cutting-edge technology has a phenomenal potential to positively impact millions of human lives.
