Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Center (BMHRC), Bhopal has now started advanced treatment of heart failure patients. In the last two months, 9 gas victim patients have been treated through cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) and left bundle branch pacing (LBB pacing). CRT-D devices were implanted in five seriously ill patients, while LBB pacing devices were implanted in four patients.
These processes are extremely complex as well as quite expensive but at BMHRC, it is provided free of cost to gas victims and their dependent patients. Dr Ashish Shankhadhar, Assistant Professor in the Cardiology Department of BMHRC, said, “The heart supplies blood to other parts of the body through various blood vessels. This is called heart pumping. The normal pumping capacity of the heart of any healthy person is 60-65 percent. If this pumping capacity i.e. ejection fraction falls below 42 percent, it falls in the category of heart failure.
Due to which, the patient's ability to work is severely affected, shortness of breath, stomachache and symptoms like swelling in the legs starts showing. If the pumping capacity of the heart falls below 20 to 25 percent then the patient's condition becomes critical and the risk of cardiac arrest highly increases. The last ray of hope for treatment of such patients is by CRT-D and LLB pacing devices.
The symptoms improve significantly after installation of the device”.These devices can be installed only after getting favorable results. It cannot be implanted in every cardiac failure patient. To ensure that these devices will be completely beneficial for the patient, the patient has to undergo several tests. The devices can be only implanted, if favorable results are obtained in all tests. How do these devices work? CRT and LBB pacing detect abnormal heart rhythms and deliver a sharp shock that restarts the heartbeat. What is heart failure? Heart failure is a serious problem, in which the heart stops working and is unable to pump enough blood-oxygen. Due to which the lungs get filled with water and breathing becomes short. Due to filling of intestines with water, appetite stops and the entire metabolism gets affected. If proper treatment is not received after becoming a victim of heart failure, then the patient has to be admitted to the hospital from time to time.
Dr Manisha Shrivastav, Director In-charge BMHRC, Bhopal said, “BMHRC is committed to serving gas victim patients. Each and every patient's life is important for us. In such a situation, when it was told by the doctors that it is necessary to install CRTD and RRB pacing devices to save the lives of these patients, we provided these devices without any delay by following the proper procedure. Happy that these efforts were successful and we succeeded in saving the lives of the patients.”