Thane woman's leaking mitral valve fixed without open-heart surgery

Doctors at Jupiter Hospital in Thane treated a 73-year-old woman patient without open-heart surgery, using an advanced transcatheter edge-to-edge repair, or TEER, procedure. This is said to be the first such procedure performed in Thane. The patient was battling high-risk heart failure, with blood leaking through her mitral valve.

For nearly two weeks, the patient had been sleeping sitting up in her hospital bed, because lying down brought on severe breathlessness. She had undergone coronary artery bypass grafting, or CABG surgery, a few years earlier, after which the leakage in her mitral valve gradually worsened and she began suffering repeated episodes of heart failure. Medication was no longer giving her much relief, and a second open-heart surgery would have carried very high risk for her.

A team led by consultant interventional cardiologists Dr Gautam Rege and Dr Prateek Sane at Jupiter Hospital, Thane, carried out the procedure using the MyClip system. Without reopening the chest, the cardiology team accessed the heart through a small puncture in a vein near the patient's thigh. Guided by real-time imaging, a catheter fitted with a special clip was navigated to the heart and precisely fixed onto the leaking mitral valve. The clip brought the two parts of the valve closer together, significantly reducing the backward flow of blood and allowing the heart to pump more effectively.

The entire procedure took about four hours and was performed under general anaesthesia. The patient was taken off the ventilator the same day.

Dr Gautam Rege said, "Ten years ago, patients like this had very few options beyond medication and supportive care, because repeat surgery was extremely risky. Today, structural heart interventions have made it possible to fix valve leakage in select patients without open-heart surgery. Our aim isn't just to repair the valve, but to reduce recurring heart failure and hospital admissions, improve breathing, and help patients live independently again."

According to Dr Prateek Sane, the most important part of this case was not just the technology, but the change the procedure brought to the patient's everyday life. He said, "Before the procedure, she couldn't even lie down to sleep, because fluid would build up in her lungs the moment she did, causing severe breathlessness. Sleeping comfortably is a small thing for most of us, but for her it had become impossible. If she can now sleep through the night, walk a few steps without having to stop, and avoid repeated hospital admissions, that is real success for us."

Dr Sane also said that the TEER procedure has been introduced at a few select centres in India over the past two to three years, but the facility is still available only at hospitals with advanced structural heart programmes. He said that having specialised equipment alone is not enough for such procedures; they also require an experienced multidisciplinary team, high-quality echocardiographic imaging, a modern cardiac catheterisation lab, and expert anaesthesia support.

The cardiology team sees this case as a significant step forward in expanding advanced heart treatment facilities in Thane.