Dr. Shiv Kumar and his team demonstrated the Clearway Catheter technique, live to over 3000 cardiologists attending the prestigious C3 summit (Complex Cardiovascular Catheter Therapeutic) - a global Cardiac Intervention summit held annually at Orlando, USA, on June 18th, 2013. Clearway Catheter technique was voted as one of the twenty medical innovations by clinicians in the year 2012 and was approved by FDA.
The angioplasty procedure using Clearway Catheter technique was performed on a 59 year old gentleman, presented at Apollo hospitals, Secunderabad with severe chest pain of 3 hours duration & moderate pain of 1 day duration. This patient had a history of heart attack 4 yrs back, with no further details available and no intervention done. The angiography showed complete blockage of LAD artery with loads of clots. A bypass surgery was not possible; therefore he was taken for angioplasty. The artery was found to be full of clots and an effort to extract the block didn’t help. Hence, Clearway Catheter was used, as it permits delivery of drug in the clot. The patient has since recovered fully and is in a position to lead a normal life.
Despite performing ‘Primary Angioplasty’ – an angioplasty performed in an emergency, the long term outcomes in 25% of the cases are not satisfactory. The reason for poor outcomes in these cases is the trickling down of the clot particles while clearing the block, into smaller branches of blood vessels and clogging those vessels. Clearway Catheter technique dissolves these clot particles completely by delivering the desired medicine on the clot itself.
Clearway Catheter - a new drug delivery balloon infuses medicines on the site of the clot and allows targeting of the occluding blood clot for a longer period of time, to maximize its therapeutic effect in the blocked artery. According to Dr. Shiv Kumar, this Catheter through its unique mechanism permits drug concentrations hundreds of times greater at the site of local delivery than traditional systemic drug administration. This higher concentration of drugs working for a longer duration on the hardened clot, ensures complete dissolving of the clot and thereby prevents deposition of clot particles in other parts of the vessel leading to its blockage.:
