CHENNAI : After battling poor health for three-and-a-half years, a 27-year-old man underwent complex surgical treatment for a rare and life-threatening pulmonary condition at Kauvery Hospital, Vadapalani. His symptoms and investigations revealed a serious condition known as Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension (CTEPH) — a condition characterised by elevated blood pressure in the lung arteries associated with blood clots originating from deep veins in the lower limbs or pelvis. These blood clots can dislodge and travel in the venous system to the lung arteries. When diagnosed early, this is typically treated with anticoagulation for up to six months.
With progressive deterioration in his medical condition, the pressure in his lung arteries was over fourfold from normal. At this level of pulmonary hypertension, the right side of the heart starts struggling to pump adequate blood into the lungs.
In a remarkable turn of events, a multidisciplinary team led by Dr Kumud Kumar Dhital, director of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery Program at Kauvery Hospital, Vadapalani, intervened to save the patient’s life by offering the only curative therapy for this condition. The team included interventional cardiologists, radiologists, intensive care experts, surgeons, and pulmonologists, meticulously assessing the complex situation before getting on to a high-stakes surgical procedure. The procedure called Pulmonary Endarterectomy involves general anaesthesia, placement on the heart-lung machine, cooling the body down to 20 degrees celsius and then stopping all blood circulation in the body for brief periods of 20 minutes to surgically visualise and meticulously extract the chronic scar tissue from within the lung arteries. Dr Aravindan Selvaraj, co-founder and executive director of Kauvery Group of Hospitals, congratulated Dr Kumud Kumar Dhital and the entire medical team for their expertise.