New heart surgery method to raise life span of patient
New heart surgery method to raise life span of patient
JAKARTA (JP): Patients undergoing heart surgery will now have a better chance of survival due to the introduction of a new technique dealing with myocardial preservation.
Tarmizi Hakim, head of the surgery department of the Harapan Kita Cardiac Hospital/National Cardiac Center, said in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post yesterday that the new technique deals with the protection of the heart while it is stopped during open heart surgery.
Tarmizi said that the Harapan Kita Hospital/National Cardiac Center will apply this method to keep up with medical advances.
"The method slightly raises operation costs but the overall cost of hospital stay should be reduced by a shorter recovery time for the patients," he said.
The technique was introduced by Gerald Buckberg, a professor of surgery in the cardiothoracic surgery division of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), at the Harapan Kita hospital on March 13 - 17.
During his visit to Indonesia, Buckberg and a team of the Harapan Kita hospital operated on five local patients. "All of them are doing well," Tarmizi said.
Patients undergoing this method also recover faster than before, which, he reiterated, means that the overall costs will also decrease.
Under the technique a chemical solution called blood cardioplegia is fed to the patient through a machine to provide the heart with nutrition while it is stopped.
According to Buckberg's research, the solution is more effective if it is applied forward through the arteries and backward through the veins.
The new integrated method protects and preserves the heart during the open surgery and ensures that the heart does not get damaged, Tarmizi said.
The method is currently being used by 70 percent of the surgeons in the U.S. for both adult and pediatric heart operations. It is also being adopted with increasing frequency in Europe and Asia.
Buckberg's visit was part of a program between the Asian Cardiovascular Exchange (ACE) with the UCLA Medical Center.
The ACE-UCLA program was set up two years ago between nine Asian medical centers in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia. (hhr)