Doctors at the department of cardiology of the Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University (IMS-BHU), have saved the life of a 35-year-old woman suffering from rare heart disease, after performing a difficult angioplasty procedure on her.

The team led by Prof Om Shankar said that the condition of the woman was so severe that she wasn't even able to walk a few steps without unbearable chest, jaw and upper limb pain. All the symptoms pointed towards serious heart disease. She had already got her angiography done in a private hospital, which revealed a serious condition of a heart ailment, also difficult to treat locally, hence she was referred to the cardiology department of Sir Sunderlal Hospital, BHU.

According to Prof Shankar, her angiography revealed that the most important artery of her left side of the heart (ostial left main), was seen to be narrowed to the thread-like structure. This type of heart disease is considered to be the most serious and many people facing similar conditions often become victims of untimely deaths due to sudden cardiac arrests. He said that considering the severity of the disease, only two treatments were possible in this case. Either the patient had to undergo open-heart (bypass) surgery, which would have been costly, or it has to be dealt with angioplasty, which was followed in this case.

"We decided to conduct angioplasty on her, which was a really challenging task," he said, adding that the condition of the artery was difficult to negotiate through the wires. Then the position and alignments of the blood vessels was such that it was also quite a task to determine where to place the stent. Even a slight mistake in this procedure could have cost the patient's life.

Finally, her narrowed vessel was opened up with the help of wires, balloons and stents by inserting a needle into the artery of the hand. Immediately after angioplasty patients became completely healthy, that too without any incisions.