~ Durdans promotes a healthy heart and better life 

Durdans Hospital renowned for its clinical care across disciplines and accredited by the Joint Commission International for its outstanding care and facilities held a special seminar for the public on the 10^th of October 2015 at the Durdans Hospital Auditorium to promote a “Good Heart and Good Health”. Conducted by the highly qualified team of specialists and surgeons from the flagship Durdans Heart Centre, the seminar focused on several areas such as how to prevent heart disease, living a healthy life, healthy diet and exercise plans.

The panel of speakers included renowned specialists such as Dr. Kesava Dev who spoke on ‘Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery’, Dr. Pandula Athauda-arachchi who touched on ‘Heart Attack and cutting edge Treatments Available’, Mrs. Harshini Meegaswatte who spoke on ‘a Healthy Diet’, Dr. Dushyanthi Perera on ‘Basic Life Support’ and Dr. Shreen Wilathgamuwa dwelt on ‘Family Healthcare and Lifestyle Management’ which was followed by a Q&A session.

Dr. Kesava Dev the hospital’s leading Cardiac Thoracic Surgeon, with more than 8,500 heart related surgeries to his name including numerous Minimally Invasive (Keyhole) surgeries, commenting on the heart day seminar and the Durdans Heart Centre said, “Since joining Durdans in 2004 the cardiac team and myself have performed many cardiac bypass surgeries, valve replacements and many more. Our objective with the Heart Seminar is also to educate the general public, specifically the younger generation on how important it is to take care of their heart with the correct diet, exercise and healthy habits. We will also talk about the do’s and don’ts for heart patients, the state-of-the-art services available at the hospital and living with heart disease.”

Consultant Interventional Cardiologist Dr. Pandula Athaudaarachchi MBBS, MRCP (UK), PhD (Cambridge) and FESC FRCP (Glasgow) FRCP (Edin) also recently performed many  first of its kind complex coronary angioplasty (PTCA)s- e.g fof a calcified severe left main/LAD/Lcx bifurcation procedure with double rotablation (drilling through calcified arteries) of LMS-LAD and LMS-Lcx. The 84-year old patient only received local anesthesia during the entire procedure which was an outstanding success. This was also a unique case to South Asia.

He presented many cases on complex heart coronary procedures including antegrade and retrograde chronic total occlusions (blood vessels blocked for many years), via bypass graft interventions (angioplasty for failed bypass grafts), Laser assisted coronary angioplasty, repair of coronary dissections, Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (Aortic valves without open heart operations, via keyhole, with local anesthesia, done in 60-90 minutes), closure of birth defects (ASD). He also spoke of implanted novel generation of cardiac pacemakers without leads, directly implanted into the heart, the first of its kind in an Asian patient, from Durdans Hospital.

The question and answer session provided the audience with an excellent opportunity to discuss with the experts one-to-one, on various aspects of heart disease.

Durdans Hospital established its flagship facility the Durdans Heart Centre in 1999 with cardiac surgeries commencing in the year 2000. The first of its kind offering unmatched cardiac care, it revolutionized healthcare for the people of Sri Lanka. Durdans has proven to be a centre of excellence in cardiology, cardiac surgery and cardiac investigative procedures both interventional and non-interventional with over 35,000 procedures completed. Durdans is also served by some of the best cardiologists and cardiac surgeons, while state-of-the-art equipment enables the hospital to carry out highly successive procedures in this discipline. The most recent introduction being the revolutionary new generation of interventional X-ray systems, the Phillips AlluraClarity family FD10 with ClarityIQ technology which includes a comprehensive set of system-wide improvements that virtually ends the trade-off between X-ray dose and image quality and dramatically reduces the X-ray dose typically by about 83%. The new Catheterization Laboratory was also declared opened in December last year.

“The Cardiac Seminar is an integral part of our commitment to educate people on how important it is to take care of your health and be observant of early warning signs.  We have held many such programmes before as well.  We are planning to introduce regular educational programmes in several disciplines to create awareness among the public on important changes they need to make to improve quality of life” stated Dr. Wimal Jayantha, Director Medical Services of Durdans Hospital.