Monday, August 22, 2011

#AskDrKK: What are the methods of treating heart blockages?

#DrKKAnswers:
The methods of treatment can be understood by “Dr KK’s formula of easing out traffic congestion”. In any traffic one uses green and red lights to discipline the traffic; post a traffic inspector to divert the traffic; hire an architect to see the status of the roads; o widening of the arteries and build fly over or underpasses with or without stopping the traffic.

In terms of heart blockages green and red light indicates correcting and to discipline the life style. Red light indicate don’ts in life and green light indicates do’s in life.
Hiring of a traffic inspector indicates hiring a cardiologist to prescribe drugs to reduce the demand and increase the blood supply and divert the flow to smaller channels through drugs.

Hiring the architect means hiring an interventional cardiologist to do angiography to know the extent of blockages and the alternative repair procedures available.

Widening of the roads means opening the blocked arteries with balloon angioplasty. To prevent re encroachment of the roads railings are put on the roads. In terms of heart blockades it is equivalent to open the artery with balloon and put a metallic stent.

When a stent is put it can be bare metal stent or a drug eluting stent. Drugs are eluted on a metallic stent to prevent formation of a clot over them. Now a days instead of using drug eluting stents some cardiologists are eluting the baloons with the drugs so that either they can avoid a stent altogether or put a bare metal stent after that to reduce the cost.

Finally if stent cannot be put building fly over is equated to doing a bypass surgery.

No comments:

Post a Comment