Doctors At Holy Spirit Hospital Used New Technology “Sonic Pressure Waves” To Open Up Heart Artery Blockages

“Intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) is therapy designed to treat calcified artery blockages with sonic pressure waves historically used to treat patients with kidney stones” Say Dr Amit Sharma

“Shockwave Intravascular Lithotripsy is a novel procedure which brings hope for those patients suffering from an advanced form of coronary artery disease” Dr. Pinto.

by Suman Gupta

Mumbai, A team lead by Interventional Cardiologist Dr. Amit Sharma and Dr. Brian Pinto at Holy Spirit Hospital, Andheri successfully performed a 1^st case in Mumbai using a new technology of Coronary Shockwave Lithotrypsy to open up a complex and hard calcified blockage in an 88-year-old patient Dr. M B Shah who was admitted for the removal of major heart blockages.

Calcium slowly develops and progresses to its hardened within the heart arteries of elderly people. It is developed slowly but its impact is immediately encountered when performing procedures in calcified lesions. The calcium’s hardened structure restricts normal artery movement and makes the rigid arterial tissue resistant to traditional balloon therapies that have been designed to compress the plaque within the artery wall to restore normal blood flow. The presence of calcium increases the complexity of most cases and decreases the effectiveness of most treatments.

Dr Amit Sharma, Interventional Cardiologist at Holy Spirit Hospital said “For many years, calcium around the coronaries makes difficult in tackling elderly and diabetic patients with complex coronary artery disease. The calcium in the arteries is so hard that the balloon that is usually used to make room for the stent, itself ruptures. Intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) is designed to generate sonic pressure waves to break up calcified artery blockages historically used to treat patients with kidney stones. New technology used makes angioplasty much easier for an elderly patients having calcium deposition in the artery and make it easy to put stent for blood flow. Sonic Pressure waves are usually used to break Kidney stones. This technology is the first time used for breaking calcium blockages in the elderly.”

Dr Amit Sharma Said “The new technology Coronary Shockwave Lithotrypsy used involves advancing a specialized catheter and delivering pulsatile sonic pressure waves at the blockage site to break the calcium in the artery wall. At the same time, these sonic waves pass through surrounding soft vascular tissue in a safe manner, so that the blood flow in the artery is never affected. This Procedure is done with imaging (Intravascular ultrasound/ OCT) to make sure the passage of stents subsequent to the pressure wave therapy is easy.”

“At present rotablation therapy is used for removing calcium surrounded inside the artery this may sometimes result in an increased risk for adverse events, since they don’t differentiate between the calcific lesion and soft intimal tissue of the artery.” adds Dr Sharma.

Brian Pinto, Interventional Cardiologist at Holy Spirit Hospital says “While these are still early days to comment on this mode of therapy, it is very clear that this is a game-changing technology for the treatment of calcified coronary artery disease.”