Madam Helen Tan is the first patient in Singapore to be fitted with a new type of potentially life-saving heart pump, which doctors say will provide a valuable new option for heart patients who have stopped responding to medication.
Last year, even 15 minutes of housework could affect Madam Tan’s wellness. She said in Mandarin, ‘I had to lie down and rest. Sometimes, I even got breathless while talking to someone.’ This was the height of the 57-year-old’s heart health problems, which she allowed to continue for a month until, in September last year; the mother of two had the HeartWare ventricular assist device inserted into her chest in a four-hour operation. She beamed, ‘Now, I can talk non-stop, go out, cook for my family, do the laundry and play with my grandchildren.’
The titanium device has been designed for those awaiting transplants and, at the size of a golf ball and weighing 160g, is both smaller and lighter than its predecessors. This allows the HeartWare ventricular assist device to fit inside your body more easily, and doctors at the National Heart Centre Singapore said that it does not require them to create a pocket underneath the heart to house it, again making it dissimilar to previous generations of pumps.
According to Dr C. Sivathasan, co-director of the centre’s heart and lung transplant programme, the new size and needs of the device reduces the surgery time from five hours to four, and it is more suitable for groups that tend to be small in build, such as women and people from Asia. The device also enables you to take lower doses of blood thinning drugs, to prevent blood clotting inside the pump, than with the older devices.
Now, four patients have been fitted with the $160,000 device, meant for those with advanced heart failure who no longer respond to medication, and are waiting for a transplant. Over 2,500 people have used the pump worldwide since 2006, and according to Associate Professor Lim Chong Hee, who led Madam Tan’s surgery, having this new option available in Singapore is ‘a big deal.’ Heart failure accounts for 5,000 Singaporean hospital admissions a year, and Hee claimed it is set to become the next epidemic among heart diseases.
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