Mumbai woman operated upon fifth time for heart valve replacement

During a redo heart surgery, there is serious risk of damaging while opening the chest, making a second time redo very complex.

"However a fifth-time redo operation along with aortic aneurysm operation is unheard of and was for the first time successfully performed at AHI," said Panda.

Another 67-year old patient from Mumbai, Satyavan Gaikwad, a diabetic, was operated on last January at AHI for five grafts, which was another rare and complicated procedure.

The AHI notched a milestone on Saturday with its 3,500th high-risk heart surgery, besides another 21,000 cardiac operations till date.

Presenting a mega study on 'beating heart redo bypass surgeries' on 411 cardiac patients, including nearly 50 percent of them diabetics, between January 2003-February 2016, AHI's senior cardiovascular thoracic surgeon Sunil Vanzara said the average number of grafted arteries used per heart patient was 3.7 against a global average of 2.3.

"This proved that the incidence and complexity of coronary artery disease in India is higher compared to the western world, and in the past four decades we have seen a four-fold increase in this. At AHI, 99.5 percent of all surgeries performed with beating heart technique," Vanzara said.

Panda reiterated that an increasing number of coronary artery bypass grafting, angioplasties and redo bypass surgeries are being performed every year in India which has a whopping 61.50 million people with coronary artery disease as per the National Interventional Council data of 2015.

AHI Medical Director Vijay DSilva said over 200,000 cardiac surgeries are performed in India of which less than one percent are redo-bypass procedures.

In 2014, as many as 248,152 angioplasties were performed -- an increase of 14.50 percent over 2013, he added.