- City Fajr Shuruq Duhr Asr Magrib Isha
- Dubai 05:07 06:22 12:05 15:16 17:42 18:57
Dubai Health Authority cardiologists recently performed a minimally invasive cardiac procedure for five elderly patients in the emirate.
The latest technique, known as Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) may be used as an alternative to standard surgical aortic valve replacement. The procedure is performed on the beating heart without the need for a sternotomy or cardiopulmonary bypass.
A team of specialists including interventional cardiologists, anesthesiologists, nurses and radiologists successfully performed these procedures for three Emirati and two expatriate patients.
DHA hospitals- Dubai and Rashid --are the only hospitals in Dubai to use this new technique.
Dr Fahad Baslaib, consultant interventional cardiologist and director of Rashid Hospital's cardiology department, said, "This technology has been developed for those patients who cannot tolerate open heart surgery and or run a high risk with surgical procedures. The beauty of this technique is that it is a minimally invasive outpatient procedure which means no hospitalisation is required and the period of recovery is much shorter."
Dr Baslaib added that this procedure is particularly helpful for elderly patients who often develop a narrow aortic valve.
He said this technique is one of the latest minimally invasive procedures and DHA team members recently visited Switzerland to master this technique.
Dr Talib K Majwal, consultant, interventional cardiology and director of interventional cardiology at the Heart Centre of Dubai Hospital, said, "In this workshop, we performed this procedure for five patients all aged between 60 to 80 years. The workshop was supervised by Professor Allan Cribier, inventor of the new technique.
"Previously patients had to travel abroad for this treatment and the cost of performing this procedure abroad is five times more than the cost of performing it locally," he said.
This is the second workshop for the DHA team. The first one was performed in November 2011 on four patients, aged 60 to 90 years.
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