New lease of life for engineer after stroke

CHENNAI: Automobile engineer Ganesh (35), never knew what hit him. The lanky man, who lives at Mugalivakkam, says that the events of November 7 are still a little hazy in his mind. His wife though, relives the trauma, like it was yesterday, “He had been complaining of dizziness two days before that,” she recalls - not particularly alarming, considering that he had Type-I Diabetes from the tender age of nine onwards. One by one, the symptoms began to cascade, “He began sweating by about 10 am, his Blood Pressure shot up and when he said he couldn’t hear, we rushed to a nursing home,” she adds. Unknown to either of them, he had a massive stroke, that resulted in the complete blockage of blood to a major vessel in his brain. As he slipped into an unconscious state, he was referred to MIOT Hospitals for a cursory MRI scan.He was put on life support, as they decided on what to do. “For over a year, retrievable stents have been used extensively in the west to clear out blockages. As he had reached us a little after the ‘golden hour’ when drugs could have been used to clear the blockage, we decided to attempt this procedure,” says Dr Murali, Chief Interventional Radiologist. They prepped for surgery at 7 am the next day and were hopeful of removing the extensive blockage. “The Intravenous Clot Busters (tPA) can be administered for small clots or blocks, but this had shut out over 80 percent of the flow, so surgery was literally the only option for Ganesh,” said Dr PVA Mohandas, MD-MIOT Hospitals.The procedure sounds simple,  a small micro-catheter was taken through a pinhole in the groin and taken into the blocked brain vessel, after which a removable stent was passed through until it infiltrated the clot right through. Then the whole thing was pulled out manually, after expanding the stent tip, just like reeling in a fishing rod, except through the body’s system of blood vessels. “We were monitoring the flow and movement through X-rays and dye-injections,” adds the cardiologist, whose team managed the operation. Surprisingly, for such a life-threatening condition, the entire procedure was completed within 45 minutes. “After 12 hours they took me off support and I began eating normally that day itself,” says an overjoyed Ganesh.  The entire operation is pegged at Rs 3 lakh.