JOIN USLocal resident Savitri Devi has become the world’s oldest women to have an angioplasty, undergoing the heart procedure at the age of 102, said Dr Harinder K Bali, Director of Cardiology at Fortis Hospital in Mohali.
Savitri Devi is healthy after the procedure and has resumed her daily activities, he said on Thursday. Dr Bali said the patient was brought to the hospital with complaints of sudden breathlessness that worsened progressively with chest pain. “Devi was diagnosed as having an acute coronary syndrome. Due to heart failure she had to be put on ventilator,” Dr Bali said. “The coronary angiogram showed a 90 per cent block in the heart’s left anterior descending artery and another 80 per cent block in the left circumflex coronary artery. These blockages were life threatening,” he added.
Dr Bali decided to go ahead with high-risk angioplasty. Angioplasty and stenting was conducted through wrist. He added that Savitri Devi had competition from her male counterparts, a 104-year-old man from Noida and a 108-year-old man from Bangalore. “There are no published reports of any woman patient older than 102 having undergone angioplasty in the world, which makes Savitri Devi the oldest woman in the world to undergo angioplasty at the age of 102,” he said.
“Many elderly patients who we have operated upon had previously undergone bypass surgery. Coronary angioplasty is becoming popular in elderly patients who often have multiple medical problems like renal failure and lung disease,” he said.
He said angioplasty is particularly useful in elderly patients as the procedure is often conducted through wrist (radial artery), making hospitalisation limited to just a day and the patient is back to routine activities almost immediately.