Only a few such operations were carried out in Poland, and now the first in Lower Silesia. Doctors from Wrocław led a 63-year-old patient to a heart attack. Thanks to this, they removed the enlargement of the septum between the chambers of her heart. This, of course, significantly improved his work.
The procedure of inducing a controlled infarction, called alcohol ablation, was performed by cardiologists from the University Teaching Hospital in Wrocław. – This is a non-invasive method, an alternative to cardiac surgery that requires opening the chest and open heart surgery – explains Prof. Andrzej Mysiak, head of the Department of Cardiology of the USK.
Ablation consists in introducing a catheter through blood vessels into the left ventricle of the heart, through which high-percentage ethyl alcohol is administered to one of the branches of the septal artery. – As a result, the overgrown fragment of the interventricular septum is damaged. There is a necrosis of this part of the muscle, as in a heart attack, says Dr. Tomasz Grzebieniak, who operated on the patient from Wrocław. Of course, as in any treatment involving the heart, precision is extremely important. – If the heart attack were too large, the septum could burst. However, if it does not cover an appropriate area, the sufficient effect will not be achieved – explains Dr. Grzebieniak.
The second operator, Dr. Krzysztof Ściborski, adds that the process of “thinning” the hypertrophied septum muscle takes several months, but the improvement in the patient’s health is immediately noticeable. – In a surgical procedure, the entire overgrown part of the septum is removed at once. As a result of ablation, the “thinning” of the muscle lasts up to six months – says Dr. Ściborski. And he tells about the case of a patient who was successfully operated on: – The oversized fragment was two millimeters, after ablation one and a half, but the correct size – 1,2 mm will be achieved after a few months. Each week the patient’s efficiency will improve significantly and she returns to the form.
The method of alcohol ablation is used in people suffering from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Symptoms of the disease include shortness of breath that occurs with even the slightest exertion. In practice, this prevents patients from functioning normally in everyday life.