On September 4, Dr. Pankaj Pohekar, the cardiac surgeon and his team performed MGIMS’s first heart valve replacement surgery. He replaced two heart valves with mechanical ones.
Govind (name changed) a 48-year-old farmer from Sindi (Railway) in Wardha district was recently detected to have a heart valve that barely opened and another valve that leaked badly.
Over the last few weeks, he found it difficult to breathe, could walk only short distances and had trouble sleeping. He was not able to tend the farm. His legs began to swell and he found it very difficult to perform his basic day to day activities.
He was admitted to the MGIMS hospital, where he underwent tests to figure out how well his heart was doing. The cardiologist found that his mitral valve was reduced to a slit—it was hardly opening—and the aortic valve was terribly leaky. His heart was beating faster and irregularly and fluid had begun to build up in his lungs. His chest heaved with each heartbeat; his heart lost the usual rhythm and abnormal sounds and loud murmurs emerging from his diseased heart indicated that all was not well with his valves.
He needed a quick open-heart surgery to have his problems fixed. He needed the skills of an expert surgeon who would take off his old rigid calcium-laden blocked and leaky valves and replace them with new metallic mechanical valves. He came to Sevagram, a hospital he had visited earlier too, visibly worried and anxious.
It took the team of doctors a couple of sessions at his bedside to explain to him how heart surgery would make him breathe better and feel better. All his questions answered, he sounded more relaxed and agreed to undergo the heart operation on September 4.
This was the first time that Dr. Pankaj Pohekar, the young cardiac surgeon who has recently joined the hospital, was operating at MGIMS. Supported by a team of anesthesiologists, surgeons, physicians, and nurses, he performed the surgery with superb poise and aplomb. Soon after surgery, as he took off his bloodstained gloves, he said, “It was gratifying to replace choked heart valves and give a new lease of life to the patient. During surgery, I found that his mitral valve looked almost like the mouth of a fish, barely opening and just wide enough to permit turbulent flow of blood across the two chambers of the heart. I am sure this patient would be able to walk long distances and perform his professional work with an intensity he had not thought of.”
“We had almost given up. My father might have looked stoic but we knew that he was desperately trying hard to put on a brave face. This operation has opened new doors in my father’s life. Now we expect him to live longer and better,” said the patient’s son who was waiting outside the operating room with fear and trepidation— replaced by a visible sense of gratitude in his eyes as he spoke.
There was another reason for the patient to breathe easy. He was enrolled in the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Jan Arogya Yojana, a government-run health insurance scheme that offers free treatment to poor patients in Maharashtra, and thus was spared of the catastrophic financial burden that major heart surgeries are associated with. A reason for double celebrations!
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