Patients to benefit from electro-physiology at CHI within weeks

Jul 19, 2016 News

Not only can it help to determine the best treatment that could be administered to improve heart health,

CHI Resident Cardiologist, Dr. Mahendra Carpen

but cardiac electro-physiology could essentially serve as a cure for some heart conditions. This assertion was recently made by Resident Cardiologist at the Caribbean Heart Institute (CHI), Dr. Mahendra Carpen.
With the recent commissioning of its new Catherisation Laboratory (Cath Lab), CHI is poised to shortly introduce electro-physiology, according to Dr. Carpen.
“I am optimistic that we will be able to do it in a few weeks. I have shortened the timeframe from a year to a few months to now a few weeks, so we are very close,” declared Dr. Carpen.
This is in light of the fact that the company – Medtronic – that provides the electro-physiology , has recognised that CHI’s installation of the new Cath Lab has bolstered its ability to facilitate the procedure.
“They can actually see practicality of expanding our programme…It is not just a pipe-dream anymore,” said Dr. Carpen who first mentioned the possibility of offering the procedure when he joined CHI in 2012.
Electro-physiology is used to test the electrical activity of an individual’s heart in order to determine the origin of an arrhythmia (abnormal heartbeat). Once detected, the attending cardiologist could determine whether a patient needs medicine, a pacemaker, an implantable cardioverter defribrillator (ICD), cardiac ablation or surgery.
But with the advancement of the technique, electro-physiology can help to cure a patient’s ‘heartache’ altogether. “This is why I like this particular field of cardiology, it is one of the very few things in cardiology that actually offers a cure and not just control,” said an elated Dr. Carpen during a recent interview with this publication.
Dr. Carpen considers himself fortunate to have training not only in interventional cardiology but also electro-physiology.
Conducting this procedure is perhaps one that the Cardiologist mostly looks forward to as, according to him, “it is done mainly through the groin. It is not open heart; it is not any surgery, no cutting is involved. The majority of patients are attended to under slight sedation; it is not done under general anaesthesia.”
Dr. Carpen explained that the procedure basically allows a Cardiologist to find the perceived electrical short circuit in the heart of a patient and burn it with radio frequency energy. The end result could be the patient being permanently free of an abnormal heartbeat and, according to Dr. Carpen, “The patient can go home the same day or by the following morning.”
Follow up attention could be as little as two more visits to the Cardiologist in a single year. Generally patients’ condition improves considerably, that they are allowed to desist use of heart medications they were required to use.
And Dr. Carpen would know this all too well since he has conducted countless of these procedures.
He dedicates one week every month to offer this service to the St. Clair Medical Centre in Trinidad. Currently, Trinidad and Tobago is the only member state of Caricom that has the capacity to offer electro-physiology.
“Myself and another Trinidadian doctor do these procedures but if you look at the volume of work that is needed, no one doctor could satisfy the need, especially in a population like Trinidad,” related Dr. Carpen.
But although he is the only qualified expert at CHI to conduct the procedure, Dr. Carpen insisted that “this will not prevent us from developing and expanding, because we have a lot of patients who will benefit from this service. It is a life changing type of procedure…”

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News