Doctor pioneers non-invasive heart procedure

Dr. Robert Mathenge a Heart specialist at Equatorial Heart and Blood Vessel Clinic, based at the Nairobi Hospital, has pioneered a nonsurgical therapy proven to reduce or eliminate chest pain, shortness of breath and significantly improve quality of life for such patients.  PHOTO ; STANDARD

Kenya: People with blocked arteries or coronary heart disease find simple tasks such as walking or even bathing a challenge.

The circumstances could be grimmer for patients who do not have the option of standard surgical techniques such as balloon angioplasty and stenting, or bypass surgery.

And even those who have surgery find themselves dealing with chest pain, fatigue or shortness of breath.

Now a non-invasive treatment called Enhanced External Counter Pulsation (EECP), developed by heart specialists in Kenya, reduces or eliminates chest pain and breathlessness, and significantly improves the quality of life for such patients.

The EECP has been shown to be safe and to have benefits for the treatment of heart failure, with 80 per cent of patients who complete the 35-hour course of therapy experiencing significant symptom relief that may last up to three years.

Heart specialists at Equatorial Heart and Blood Vessel Clinic, based at the Nairobi Hospital, say the non-surgical therapy is like performing by-pass surgery without actually performing it.

Dr Robert Mathenge, a cardiologist who pioneered the procedure locally, says the it cuts by nearly half, the costs associated with by-pass surgery.

"The biggest advantage of the procedure is that it is cost-effective because it eliminates the need for surgery, it does not require hospitalisation and is not capital intensive because it does not require specialised infrastructure," says Dr Mathenge.

Although the procedure has been used in the West for several years now, its introduction in the country makes Kenya the only place in the region besides South Africa to offer the service.

Before its introduction in the country, patients travelled to India and China for medical intervention.

EECP is an outpatient treatment for coronary heart disease. Treatment is usually given for an hour each day, five days a week, for a total of 35 hours.

During the treatment, patients lie on a comfortable treatment table with large blood pressure-like cuffs wrapped around the legs or buttocks. The cuffs inflate and deflate at specific times between heart beats.

A continuous electro cardiogram (ECG) is used to set the timing so the cuffs inflate while the heart is at rest, when it normally gets its supply of blood and oxygen. The cuffs deflate at the end of that rest period, just before the heart beat. A special sensor applied to the finger checks the oxygen levels in the patient's blood and monitors the pressure waves created by the cuff inflations and deflations.

The procedure has been certified by regulatory bodies such as America Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology and also the European Society of Cardiology.

Dr Mathenge, who in 1997 pioneered in the region a heart procedure known as percutaneous coronary angioplasty and stenting, in which blocked heart blood vessels are corrected using a minimally-invasive procedure with a probe inserted through an artery in the groin, is currently training heart specialists in the new procedure.

"It took me three years of intensive training abroad to learn the procedure. I was driven mainly by the desire to help relieve the pain suffered by coronary heart disease patients," Mathenge says.