Two patients suffering from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy were saved after Chinese doctors successfully performed minimal invasive surgery on them in two separate occasions, China Daily reported.
According to the report, doctors in Xijing Hospital of the Fourth Military Medical University based in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, operated on the two patients guided by ultrasound and without conducting a thoracotomy, or without incision or cutting through the chest wall.
The hospital announced on Wednesday, Sept. 21, that the doctors operated on the apical ventricular septum of two patients, using radio-frequency catheter ablation, successfully treating hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
Liu Liwen, a doctor and director of the hospital's department of medical ultrasonics, said that the operations were the first of its kind to be conducted in the world, according an Internet research conducted by the Science and Technology Novelty Search workstation under the Ministry of Education.
Liu said that they carried out the first operation on June 22, which involved a 70-year-old female local resident, surnamed Wang, who had been suffering from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy for eight years.
"The patient came to our hospital early this year when she could not walk and faced possible sudden death at any time," said Liu, who was the lead surgeon for the operations in the hospital's departments of medical ultrasonics, cardiology and anaesthesia.
"We used a radio-frequency needle with a 1.6 mm diameter to perform 12 minutes of thermal ablation on the hypertrophic site of the interventricular septa," Liu added.
The report said that Wang was able to walk the following after the successful operation.
Another patient, a 25-year-old man who suffered from a more complicated and dangerous heart disease, were operated on by the same doctors in the hospital on Sept. 6. The patient also reportedly made a full recovery.
The doctors, who operated on the two patients, have more than 10 years of experience in using ultrasound guidance in operation. They had also been working and researching on the treatment for three years, which include nearly 100 experiments on animals, according to Liu.