Trillium In The News

The Mississauga News

Doctor praised for new heart device

LOUIE ROSELLA
May 17, 2002

For Dr. Gopal Bhatnagar, Sonny and Cher's hit song The Beat Goes On, takes on a remedial meaning.

The Mississauga doctor is being lauded in the medical community for developing a ground-breaking instrument that improves heart surgery and makes it less risky.
A new heart positioner device, introduced to Ontario Monday, allows for surgeons to perform the tricky surgery while the heart is still beating.

Typically, the surgery must be performed while the heart is stopped, using a heart-lung machine which pumps and oxygenates the blood for the body.
But the device developed by Bhatnagar, chief of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery at Trillium Health Centre (THC), makes it safer for surgeons to place grafts on the surface of the heart while it continues to beat.

"This device will provide heart surgery patients with a higher standard of care and improved surgical outcomes," Bhatnagar said in an interview yesterday.
Cardiovascular officials say a heart-lung machine is complex and carries potential risks such as a stroke, kidney or lung failure.

"There are definitely situations where beating heart surgery is less risky than conventional surgery," said Dr. Stephen Fremes, head of cardiovascular surgery at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. "But with beating heart surgery, when you dislocate the heart, the patient's blood pressure is better maintained."
Bhatnagar said patients who have had this "beating heart surgery" have shown improved recovery, and it's now possible to offer surgery to an increasing number of patients who've been refused a life-saving operation.

Of the 1,000 heart surgery patients that THC receives annually, about five per cent are denied surgery because of the risks.

But Bhatnagar said that less blood is lost with beating heart surgery, meaning less transfused blood is needed.

In addition, Bhatnagar said, a recent study by the American Association for Thoracic Surgery showed beating heart surgery patients had less damage to the heart muscle during surgery.

The Health Canada approved device, called the Starfish 2, was developed last year when Bhatnagar collaborated his expertise with Medtronic of Canada Ltd., a medical technology company headquartered in Meadowvale.

The Starfish uses suction technology to gently lift and rotate the beating heart to expose the coronary arteries on any of its surfaces.

It then works with another device to hold a small area of cardiac surface while the surgeon stitches and operates on the patient.

"It becomes easier to pick up the heart with this device. That is the key," said Bhatnagar.

Fremes, who has used the original Starfish, referred to it as a "really good product that helps in the positioning of the heart" during surgery.

"I've been bugging the hospital to invest in one, but they say it costs too much," said Fremes of the $995 instrument, which can only be used once. "I wish we indeed had the budget for it because it's very effective."
 

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