70-year-old Rajni Shah's heart finds its way to an international journal after she became the first Indian to undergo a complicated heart surgery coupled with a thyroid operation
70-year-old Rajni Shah's heart finds its way to an international journal after she became the first Indian to undergo a complicated heart surgery coupled with a thyroid operation
For Rajni Shah (70), World Heart Day is a special occasion. It reminds her how lucky she is to survive a complicated bypass surgery coupled with thyroidectomy (see box) two years ago.
And yesterday's World Heart Day celebrations were more special after she was informed that her case had been featured in the international Annals of Thoracic Surgery medical journal's August 2009 edition.
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Less than 10 cases of this combined surgery have been performed in the world, with Rajni's being the only one in India.
Two years ago, Rajni suffered a major heart attack and her condition was critical due to the presence of a thyroid swelling around the neck, which was as large as her heart.
After a 12-hour surgery at Breach Candy Hospital, the team of doctors completed a chest bypass surgery and extracted the 4.7-inch tumour from her neck.
"Shah provided a very odd case study. She was 68 years old and weighed only around 30 kg and the swelling on her neck caused breathing problems, which led to the accumulation of carbonic acid in her body.
We couldn't operate on her heart without addressing the thyroid swelling, so we operated both together," said Dr Arun Mehra, coordinator of cardiac surgery department, Breach Candy Hospital.
In 2005, when Rajni's husband Jyotindra (71), suffered a heart attack, Dr Mehra had operated him too.
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"I was tough at the time, as I had to handle the house and my husband, but when I suffered from a heart attack, Jyotindra was completely lost," said Rajni.
Added Jyotindra, "Our hearts were in good hands. We're now famous."
The Surgery
The team of doctors performed an off pump combined coronary bypass grafting and a total thyroidectomy on Rajni in September 2007.
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A thyroidectomy is a surgical procedure involving a part of or the total thyroid gland, and is performed when the patient has thyroid cancer or an infection.
What's in you heart?
>> The heart beats 55 lakh times in one year
>> 350 crore people die of heart stroke every year worldwide
>> The human heart weighs less than a pound
>> The heart can create enough pressure that it could squirt blood at a distance of 30 feet
>> In a lifetime, the heart pumps about 10 lakh barrels of blood
>> Most heart attacks occur between the hours of 8 am and 9 am
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