Pakistani surgeon ‘only person in world using minimally invasive surgery to insert LVAD’

Eminent US-based Pakistani surgeon Dr Pervaiz Chaudhry has emerged as the only surgeon in the world who unlike other surgeons do not open chests of patients to implant the Left-Ventricle Assist Device (LVAD). He uses a minimally-invasive or key-hole surgery to implant the device, which improves the chances of success of the procedure as well as of early recovery of the patient.

“Devices being implanted by me are called HeartMate II (Thoratec Corporation, Pleasanton, California), which are continuous-flow Left-Ventricular Assist Devices (LVADs).

“All the surgeons in the world open the chest for implanting these devices, but I’m the only surgeon in the world who uses minimally invasive surgery to implant these devices,” Dr Chaudhry claimed while talking to The News on Thursday.

A second patient received the LVAD on Thursday at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) at the hands of Dr Chaudhry and his team, including American nurse Abigail Boultinghouse. He had implanted the first LVAD into a female patient, Nafisa Mamnoon, on Monday who had been having a chronic heart failure and required LVAD device to live a normal life.

“I’m training Pakistani surgeons in minimally invasive surgery for Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) implants, bypass procedures and the pediatric cardiac surgeries as I’m the only surgeon in the world who implant the Left Ventricular Assist Devices (LVAD) in the chests of patients through a small hole while other surgeons open the chest of the patient for these procedures.”

He said his mission was to train Pakistani surgeons in carrying out minimally-invasive or key-hole surgeries so that patients could recover early and the success rate of the surgeries could improve, which would result in saving a lot of lives.

“Today’s surgery was very important as the patient was having a heart failure and he would have died if the LVAD had not been implanted immediately. We performed the procedure in emergency and, thanks God, it went very well. Local surgeons have told me that earlier several patients had died in this condition as they didn’t any solution for such patients.

“I’m a trained heart transplant surgeon also and I wish that these types of procedures are carried out in entire Pakistan in the next five years. I’m training local surgeons during every procedure and helping out local surgeons in these procedures.”