Doctors perform mechanical thrombectomy at city hospital

Doctors at Rela Hospital in Chennai have successfully performed a mechanical thrombectomy, a catheter-based procedure used to physically extract a blood clot from the lung artery.

According to a press release, the procedure was performed on a 42-year-old patient, who had suffered an injury to his left leg and subsequently developed deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a condition in which a blood clot forms in the deep veins of the leg.

The clot eventually blocked the flow of blood to the heart. The patient suffered multiple cardiac arrests. The emergency department of the hospital diagnosed a pulmonary embolism, and the thrombectomy was performed by Shabnam Fathima A., consultant, vascular surgery, with the assistance of a multidisciplinary team of specialists.