THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a major breakthrough, doctors at Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST) have successfully performed a blood-filtering procedure to wash harmful, bad cholesterol directly out of a patient’s blood, significantly reducing her future cardiac risk.
The advanced procedure, known as LDL apheresis, acts like a filter to clear out dangerous fats that regular medications fail to control, making SCTIMST one of the few select centres in India to offer the therapy. The landmark procedure was conducted on a 34-year-old woman suffering from Homozygous Familial Hypercholesterolemia (HoFH), a rare genetic condition that causes extremely high cholesterol levels from a young age.
The patient already had severe premature coronary artery disease and had undergone a coronary artery bypass surgery at a young age of 24. Despite taking the maximum tolerable doses of multiple cholesterol-lowering medications, her low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or bad cholesterol’ levels remained dangerously high at 500mg, showing limited improvement.
During the three-hour procedure, blood was drawn from the patient and passed through an apheresis machine to separate the plasma from the blood cells.
This plasma was then directed through a specialised adsorption column that trapped the LDL cholesterol before the treated plasma was recombined with the blood cells and safely returned to the patient. The process successfully brought the patient’s LDL level down from 500mg to an optimal 40mg.
Dr Harikrishnan S, head of cardiology at SCTIMST, explained that this is a specialised treatment for a rare disease affecting a few families under their care, some of whom had previously lost members because conventional medicines could not lower their abnormally high cholesterol.
The medical team also included Dr Manish Yadav from the cardiology department and Dr Amita R, additional professor from the transfusion medicine department.
While the breakthrough marks a major step forward for the management of inherited cholesterol disorders in South India, health experts have raised concerns regarding the sustainable deployment of the therapy. Though it can be performed on an out-patient basis, the patient’s cholesterol levels are expected to rise quickly again, meaning the procedure must be repeated every two to four weeks to maintain control and reduce cardiac risks.
While a single session costs Rs 70,000, the annual cost for a high-risk patient requires around Rs 15 lakh.
