Health Minister Inaugurates New Facility Of Excimer Laser Coronary Angioplasty At ACI

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Raipur. 29 January 2021.-While the world has been fighting against the Covid pandemic, the non – covid health issues had taken a back seat, yet, Advanced Cardiac Institute affiliated to Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Medical College, Raipur, created history with the country’s first coronary LASER Angioplasty done on 29th January 2021, putting the country among the few countries in Asia with this advanced treatment.

On the occasion of this big achievement, Health Minister of Chhattisgarh, T S Singhdev visited the Advanced Cardiac Institute and congratulated the team of cardiologists of ACI by inaugurating the new Excimer Laser Coronary Angioplasty (ELCA) Laser system. The Health Minister expressed happiness on the occasion that it is a matter of great pride that the facility of coronary laser angioplasty has been started at ACI which will prove to be extremely beneficial for patients with complicated coronary artery stenosis Heart disease. Health facilities are being rapidly upgraded in state government institutions. “I congratulate the ACI team for achieving national level achievement.”

Advanced Cardiac Institute (ACI) is the heart hospital at government medical college, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, that has been conceptualized by the state government for advanced treatment for heart diseases. Since its inception on 1st November 2017, the institute has led the cardiac treatment in and around the state. The institute is among top cardiac hospitals in the country to have implanted a pacemaker in 102 year old patient. ACI is also credited for many of state’s first advanced procedures for complex cardiac diseases, 3D Electrophysiology and Radiofrequency Ablation (3D EPS), Transfemoral Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI), Left Atrial Appendage Closure (LAA device) and Physiological Pacing at a government institution. The state government supports free advanced cardiac treatment procedures through the Dr Khoobchand Baghel Swastyha Sahayata Yojana (DKBSSY), a scheme that replicates National Health Services from Great Britain.

Dr Smit Shrivastava, Head of the Cardiology Department at Advanced CARDIAC Institute while explaining the Excimer laser coronary angioplasty (ELCA) said that ECLA is advanced treatment for difficult to treat blockage in the heart vessel to facilitate optimal final stent placement. It uses excimer lasers that use a mixture of a rare gas and halogen as an active medium to generate pulses of short wavelength, high-energy ultraviolet (UV) light to vaporize blockages in the undilatable lesion, very old total blockages, long and diffuse atherosclerotic lesions or in-stent re-blockages (due to excessive neointimal proliferation), ostial or bifurcation lesions requiring ablative blockage modification, and in emergency angioplasty with large blood clots. The conventional balloon angioplasty uses compressive force to tear away the blockages, while the high energy from the LASER vaporizes the coronary blockage. Excimer laser energy has been shown to ablate inorganic material by photochemical mechanisms that breaks molecular bonds without generation of excessive heat.

A 46 year old female patient was admitted at ACI with heart attack and recurrent chest pain, her coronary angiography revealed a tight 90 percent blockage in the first left artery of heart. Dr Smit Shrivastva said the attempts to perform angioplasty by conventional ballooning did not yield success in this young woman as lesion must be hard with fibrosis. This blockage being undilatable, made the case an ideal one for the use of LASER. The blockage was successfully vaporised by the high energy LASER and proper stents were placed to prevent future blockages. The patient is planned to be discharged from the institute after 2 days of the procedure.

According to Dr. Smit Shrivastava, Head of the Cardiology Department The ECLA technology can prove helpful in angioplasty of those patients who have undilatable, age-old total or long and diffuse blockages or re-blockages in prior stents and in removing blood clots in emergency angioplasty.

Richa Sahay

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