The Global Heart Care (GHC), a non-governmental organisation based in Germany in conjunction with the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC), has performed the first minimally invasive heart procedure for three children with in-born congenital heart valve defects on admission at the centre.
The medical condition, pulmonary stenosis, impedes blood flow from the right heart into the lung, causing breathlessness due to inadequate oxygen supply.
It was corrected through a closed-heart surgery involving the use of a catheter with deflated balloon at the tip, inserted through the veins, and inflated to correct the defect in the heart.
Being the first of its kind in West Africa, the novel technology is used to treat simple heart defects such as hole in heart and other cardiac defects without open heart surgery.
The intervention was at the invitation of the UGMC.
The founder of the GHC, Professor Charles Yankah, a Ghanaian cardiologist based in Germany told the Ghanaian Times that the procedure was performed on the children on May 15 -16 and they had since been discharged and were leading normal life at home.
Prof. Yankah said the team that performed the procedure was led by Dr Regina Bokenkanp, from the Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands.
“Dr Bokenkanp has set up a historic record as a female interventionist cardiologist to perform first congenital heart operation in children without opening the chest, in West Africa,” Prof. Yanka said.
“This is a milestone cardiology in W/A which will motivate women and young physicians, nurses in the medical field to be integrated into high tech heart disease treatment process with less trauma and quick recovery.
He said unlike the open heart surgery that requires 14-day admission, the minimally invasive procedure requires only two days for recovery, adding that it was without pain and trauma unlike open heart surgery.
The intervention, he said was at the invitation of the UGMC adding that the GHC had signed an agreement with UGMC to train and build capacity for doctors to perform such procedures, stating that it took not less than seven years to be trained in that procedure.
Pulmonary stenosis, Prof. Yankah said was a tight heart which connects the right heart and the lungs, resulting in “saturation in the systemic blood circulation”.
He said the condition in the children was repaired by minimally invasive venous at the groin, saying “with a puncture in the vein of the groin, she navigated a catheter with deflated balloon at the tip placed into the heart, under X-ray guidance, to place into the right pulmonary vein.”
“The deflated balloon at the tip of the catheter is inflated to open the right pulmonary to correct the defect,” Prof. Yankah added.
The high-tech interventional paediatric cardiology procedure was supported by Philips engineers, the bioengineers and the ICT staff of the UGMC.
BY SALIFU ABDUL-RAHAMAN
