Heart failure is a new devil in the field of cardiology: Dr Mohammed Rehan Sayeed – ETHealthworld.com

Shahid Akhter, Editor, ETHealthworld spoke to Dr. Mohammed Rehan Sayeed the Chairman, The Heart Center, Bangalore, to know more about the keyhole heart surgery or minimal access approach for heart diseases.

Heart Disease: Trends Heart disease has been and still is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. The causes have slowly changed over the years. Wherein the past, Valvular heart disease was the leading cause of heart disease, it has slowly changed to Coronary artery disease and now shifting to heart failure as a new set of diseases The failure of the heart to pump the blood out at the required volume and rate is termed heart failure and there are many causes such as diabetes, alcoholism, coronary artery disease and bad valvular heart disease too.

Up until recently, coronary artery disease was the single largest leading cause of death from heart disease accounting for over 80-90% of the deaths and the rest formed the minority. Over the years heart failure has emerged as a new devil and today almost 30-40% of deaths result from heart failure due to many causes.

The Heart Center The Heart Center is Bangalores first stand alone cardiac surgical facility established in June of 2014. We are a center of excellence for minimal access cardiac surgery and do the largest volume of keyhole heart surgeries across the Indian and south Asian landscape. I am the lead surgeon and have been instrumental in driving the growth of this program. As a team, we do about 400 open-heart surgeries a year and of these we do about 350 of them through keyholes or minimal access approach. In this approach we avoid cutting of the chest bone, which makes recovery fast. We have studied our results and presented the techniques in international meetings, our success rate is 99%, which gives us the impetus to do more of these procedures through this approach. Patient satisfaction rates are also as high as Angioplasty but this is superior in terms of long-term outcomes as evidenced by all studies especially with relation to bypass surgery.

Cardiac Training @ The Heart Center We are a leading center for minimal access cardiac surgery in India and hence we have surgeons from across India training with us on a regular basis. We run 3-4 workshops a year with hands on training for surgeons. Most of those who come are senior surgeons with good hands. We also have an International fellowship program wherein surgeons from overseas come and train with us for a week to ten days.

I started going overseas and operating in countries like Iraq, Yemen and Nigeria almost around 10 years ago. I do about 100-150 surgeries a year overseas and by God's grace have been able to reproduce the same results overseas. This has put India on global map and attracted patients and doctors to come and train with us.

The Heart Center : Future Plans We have put together a new brand for this journey and it is called NEW HOPE SURGICAL CENTERS. This is with the intent of taking tertiary care surgery to the doorstep of Africa and giving their patients a new hope of life. The main aim is to reverse medical tourism for the more common surgical procedures and let them come to India only for the high-end qua-ternary procedures.

By taking these surgeries to the doorstep of Africa we have been providing tertiary surgical care at the African location, reducing the cost of surgery for the patient by reducing his cost of travel and visa and stay in India. Reducing the drain of foreign reserves for the African country and helping its economy. Exposing the local doctors such high quality surgery, train them in their environment and hopefully make them self-sufficient sooner than later. Help the patient by ensuring their families are with them in the time of need so better emotional support.

Future expansion plans for New Hope Surgical centers The plan is to populate the African subcontinent with 8-10 centers over the next 2-3 years depending on the economic conditions of the world. We currently have three centers in Nigeria in Abuja, Lagos and Kano. We have some inroads into Cameroon, Uganda, Tanzania, Congo and Ghana.

If we get this right and deliver our promise we should make a huge difference to healthcare in Africa and we look forward to raising funding from like minded partners to make this journey a game changer for African healthcare.

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Heart failure is a new devil in the field of cardiology: Dr Mohammed Rehan Sayeed - ETHealthworld.com