MEDICAL SCIENCE
Siriraj Hospital - live to Paris
Associate Professor Dr Damras Tresukosol, who heads the endovascular-intervention unit at Her Majesty’s Cardiac Centre of the Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj Hospital, prepares for a percutaneous coronary intervention session.
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Only hospital in Asia picked to send images of heart surgery to conference
Siriraj Hospital is the only institute in Asia chosen as a centre to transmit a live percutaneous coronary intervention to an important international conference on cardiology, EURO Palais de Congres 2006. The live procedure will be broadcast between 2pm and 3.30pm on Friday. The four-day EURO Palais de Congres 2006, or EURO-PCR 2006, ends on Friday in Paris. More than 15,000 doctors, nurses and technicians are registered for the conference, which focuses on endovascular intervention. The percutaneous coronary intervention has become a more common procedure than coro-nary artery bypasses in many countries, and the number of procedures continues to increase every year. In one day an interventionist may treat four to six patients with complex, multi-vessel disease or acute coronary syndromes. Various balloons, stents, and other devices are delivered by means of a 2mm-diameter catheter introduced via a periphe- ral artery. The success rate is very high, and the risk of serious complication is low. After a few hours patients can be mobilised, and they are usually discharged the same or the next day. The EURO-PCR 2006 has chosen only 14 live transmission centres, and has included Her Majesty's Cardiac Centre in the Faculty of Medicine at Siriraj Hospital. Dr Damras Tresukosol, who heads the endovascular-intervention unit at the centre, yesterday said Siriraj Hospital was chosen to join the conference because of its outstanding performance in treating heart patients during the past two years. "During the past year alone, we have treated 1,400 heart patients. That's the most in the country," he said. Damras said Siriraj Hospital - which is a part of the medical school - was the only institute in Thailand and one of only 10 in Asia that treats more than 1,000 heart patients a year. Damras said Siriraj Hospital first performed a percutaneous coronary intervention in 1994, and since then the service had improved constantly. "Now we've started using new equipment, known as the I-Lab," the cardiologist said.
Duangkamon Sajirawattanakul The Nation
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