‘I just had one day to save him’
Rare heart surgery helps 56- year-old teacher who also had diabetes, hypertension and a ‘100 per cent block’
Dr A.M. Thirugnanam, the senior interventional cardiologist at Ipcard Cardiac Care Centre, has performed a rare angioplasty to save the life of a 56year-old man who would have died if not operated on within the day.
“The patient had diabetes since last four years and was also suffering from hypertension. When he came for a check-up following severe chest pain, the tests showed 100 per cent blockage in the left major blood vessel of the heart. Generally, people suffering from this condition don’t survive and if the surgery wasn’t carried out he would have died within a day,” says the doctor.
“The surgery is expensive and complicated and patients often die on the operation table. Also the number of operations done in Hyderabad for this kind of a problem is very low,” says the 45-year-old doctor who has been living in the city for the past 10 years.
The hour-long angioplasty was one of the toughest that he has performed, he confesses. “I went ahead because I wanted to save a life. The patient is a high school teacher and I didn’t want to let him down,” he says, adding that the patient is back to teaching now.
For this life-saving angioplasty, Dr Thirugnanam was asked to present his case at the recent Interventional Cardiologist Conference held at Miami, Florida.