Aga Khan University Hospital uses diamond drill to clear clogged arteries

Cardiologists at the Aga Khan University Hospital have broken new ground in heart procedures by using a diamond drill to unblock a heart artery which was too hard to open with a balloon treatment alone.

An elderly patient from Uganda became the first patient to undergo this procedure in the region when it was performed and remains in a good state of health after he received this treatment, the hospital says.

Dr Mohamed Jeilan, a cardiologist at the hospital’s heart and cancer centre, said: “Among heart attack patients with blocked coronary arteries, balloon expansion (or angioplasty) at the site of blockage has been the mainstay of treatment for more than two decades.”

But in many patients, the vessel wall is hardened and the blockages are very long. In these patients, balloon inflation is unable to relieve the obstruction.

So medics at Aga Khan delivered a miniature ‘rotablator’ drill (less than 1.5mm wide) which was small enough to fit into the thin heart vessels to bore open the artery. The drill is coated with tiny pieces of diamond crystal and is used in a catheter based procedure called rotational atherectomy. “A specially designed diamond burr is used to grind away the blockage, rotating at more than 150,000 times per second,” Dr Jeilan said.

Source: The Star Kenya