A team of cardiologists at Apollo Hospitals in Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, introduced a groundbreaking procedure called the MitraClip procedure without surgery. The team, led by Dr. Ranga Reddy, an interventional cardiologist specializing in structural heart disease, performed this procedure for the first time in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. They treated an 87-year-old woman named Ms. Leela Nair who had recurrent heart failures.
The procedure involved a unique double MitraClip procedure for a patient with severe mitral valve regurgitation. Mitral valve regurgitation occurs when the valve between the left heart chambers fails to close properly, causing blood to leak backward. This is a common heart disease affecting around 24 million people worldwide and is the third most common form of valvular heart disease.
Traditionally, minimal-invasive mitral valve surgery is used to treat this condition. However, it can have high procedural complications for older or high-risk patients. The non-surgical MitraClip procedure provides a good alternative, improving outcomes for those with severe mitral valve regurgitation. The procedure was done under the guidance of senior cardiologists Dr. Manoj Agarwal and Dr. PC Rath, as well as senior cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Alla Gopala Krishna Gokhale.
