A 44-year-old patient was bought to the emergency room of Metro Hospital Faridabad recently with complaints of severe ongoing chest pain and feeling of impending doom. Earlier he was taken to a local hospital with complaint of crushing chest pain radiating to neck and shoulder. He collapsed in that hospital soon after reaching there but doctors manage to revive him immediately. He was diagnosed to have heart attack due to which he had cardiac arrest. After revival he was given injection streptokinase (thrombolysis) to control heart attack but severe chest pain continued and he was referred to a big hospital but due to non-availability of facilities and cardiologist at night, relatives decided to bring the patient to Metro Hospital Faridabad from Roorkee.

Dr. Neeraj Jain, Sr. Interventional Cardiologist & Medical Director of the hospital seen the patient on arrival. In view of his continuous chest pain and ongoing heart attack he was shifted to Cath Lab immediately. While attempting for angiography & angioplasty of heart vessels, one major risk factor here was the risk of massive bleeding due to thrombolytic agent. Thrombolytic agents causes thinning of blood & chances of torrential bleeding from any puncture in body is very high, Dr Neeraj Jain shared. So to minimize the risk of bleeding he decided to do angioplasty from radial artery (artery from wrist). This is a highly technical process which needs lot of expertise.

Coronary angiography disclosed that there was critical block in LAD artery which was extending up to the left main from where both major left sided arteries arises. Closure of his artery therefore can be life-threatening. It was a complex block and with the help of special guide wire the lesion was crossed and angioplasty was performed by Dr. Neeraj Jain with long medicated stent. This was a challenging procedure and I could save the patient with lot of efforts he added. It was very essential in this case to intervene immediately as smallest delay in opening the culprit vessel would have been proved fatal. Good backup of technical team, best Cath Lab machines & 24x7 ICU backup are essential for taking such challenges. We established first Cath Lab of Haryana state in 2002, he shared and more than 2 lac heart patients have since been treated. Dr. Neeraj said that thousands of heart attack victims have been saved by timely interventions irrespective of time, day or night!!!