NEW DELHI: A 57-year-old man from Nepal, who urgently needed a liver transplant, underwent a non-surgical clip heart valve repair so that doctors could do the transplant at Medanta Hospital, Gurgaon.
The patient was suffering from a Hepatitis C infection since 2008. Once in 2011 and then in 2018, he developed gastrointestinal bleeding and decompensation with ascites. In May 2023, he again came to Medanta, with a severe decompensated liver disease and needed a transplant urgently.
Doctors found out that he had a leakage in his heart that was causing a discharge of liquid into his body, leading to liver damage. The patient also had end-stage liver disease, and water had clogged his lungs and abdomen. In such cases, patients usually do not survive.
So, the doctors first decided to repair his heart and stop the leak using metal clips. But his health was so fragile that an open-cut surgery was risky. The doctors decided on a non-surgical treatment called tricuspid clipping.
This relatively new procedure has the potential to improve the lives of those suffering from tricuspid regurgitation, when the valve's flaps do not close properly. Tricuspid clipping treatment does not require the chest to be opened up, and recovery time is shorter. "The leak has been sealed now. We placed two clips in his heart," said Dr Praveen Chandra, chairman of the Interventional and Structural Heart Cardiology, Heart Institute at Medanta in Gurgaon.
Eight days after the valves were placed in his heart, the patient then underwent the liver transplant. Dr Arvinder Singh Soin, Chief Liver Transplant Surgeon, Medanta Hospitals said that the transplant was a challenging one because the healing time was comparatively less before undergoing the process.
"Usually, such patients do not survive because they are too sick to undergo either transplant or heart surgery. In last many years, such cases have been turned down and this is the first such patient we were able to save. The risky part was that the patient was still recovering, eight days is less time. But it was an urgent situation so had to do it," Dr. Soin added.
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