MADURAI: A private hospital in Madurai successfully treated a 34-year-old woman of her genetic heart disease by deploying the method of Alcohol Septal Ablation (ASA), which involves chemically inducing a localized heart attack.
The ASA is a non-surgical and low-cost treatment and the patient could avoid an open heart surgery.
The ASA procedure was performed by Dr Sivakumar, senior consultant, cardiologist, Meenakshi Mission Hospital and Research Center (MMHRC), Madurai, and his team of medical experts.
The patient was suffering from hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy in which the heart muscles become abnormally thick. Her echocardiogram showed an abnormal and disproportionate growth of inside walls of the left pumping chamber of the heart.
The patient also had related complications such as abnormal movement of the mitral valve, mitral regurgitation and left ventricular outflow tract obstruction.
During ASA, the doctors injected a milliliter of absolute alcohol into one of the arteries to shrink the abnormal thickening of the muscle.
“ASA is a minimally invasive alternative to surgical procedures. It is effective in reducing the size of an overgrown heart muscle. The desired result is achieved by injecting pure or absolute alcohol directly into the overgrown heart muscle. The injected alcohol creates a localised heart attack. Since the alcohol is toxic to heart cells, it kills them, and thus, reducing the size of the bulge. Without the bulge, blood flow from the heart improves,” explained Dr Sivakumar.
The patient became symptomatically better and got discharged a couple of days after the procedure.
Through ASA, the patient was able to avoid an open heart surgery that would have left a permanent scar and which would have cost more.