RIC performs Pakistan’s first MMI heart surgery

ISLAMABAD: Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology (RIC) has performed Pakistan’s first Multi-vessel Minimally Invasive (MMI) on a beating heart coronary artery surgery on a patient here Saturday.

Professor of Cardiology and Executive Director of RIC Major General Azhar Mahmood Kayani has engaged Dr Humayun Iqbal’s cardiac surgeon working in UK for more than 10 years for the purpose. Dr Humayun has been associated with world’s leading cardiac surgery centres like Pap-worth Hospital Cambridge, Hare-field Hospital London and John Radcliffe Hospital Oxford and has successfully performed many minimally invasive cardiac & lung surgery procedures there to provide the most modern/advanced cardiac surgery procedures to the general population.

He has started the similar procedures in the RIC and interestingly Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif who conceived the idea of establishing RIC took personal interest in setting up unit for MMI surgery.

With this another big milestone has been achieved by Shahbaz Sharif’s government in Punjab.

The first patient on whom the procedure was performed has recovered very well and has since been seen in the routine follow up clinic. He is very pleased with his surgery because his chest/central bone (Sternum) did not had to be cut open and there was just a few centimeter scar on the left side of his chest.

The procedure was done completely free of cost, surgeon or the institution did not charge any money and all equipment costs were paid by the government as per aim of Shahbaz Sharif.

In UK, the same procedure would have cost him approximately £25-30000 (about rupees three to four million).

It is pertinent to mention that this type of surgery called as Multi-vessel MICAS is being performed in very few centres of the world and most of them perform only single vessel grafting without sternotomy (cutting the central chest bone) and use expensive equipments including robots to do this surgery.

With his expertise Dr Humayun Iqbal has performed the multi-vessel coronary artery grafting with conventional instruments so that it can be offered free of cost (for unaffordable individuals) or at very low cost to the masses in the RIC.

Shahbaz Sharif has asked Dr Humayun Iqbal personally as well to come back to Pakistan and serve the nation, because it is his aim to provide the same extraordinary medical treatment to the masses.