Waiting for heart surgery, the 39-year-old woman suddenly stopped circulating and fell into a coma, but was saved by a doctor at Hanoi Heart Hospital.
At the end of February, the patient felt tired, coughed a lot, and had pain in his left arm. He went to a hospital near his home and was found to have moderate heart valve regurgitation. He took medicine for half a month but did not improve.
Afterwards, she was examined again at Hanoi Heart Hospital, and was diagnosed with severe mitral and tricuspid regurgitation, heart failure, infective endocarditis, pulmonary hypertension, and could barely walk, requiring hospitalization. surgery. While waiting for surgery, the patient’s condition rapidly deteriorated, suddenly experiencing cardiac arrest and respiratory arrest in early April.
The hospital is on red alert, giving patients cardiopulmonary resuscitation. A few minutes later, the heart beat again but the patient was still in a deep coma, had severe metabolic acidosis, anuria, and was transferred to the Intensive Care Department, with a poor prognosis.
Here, doctors continuously filtered blood, used antibiotics, and lowered body temperature to resuscitate the patient. After one day, she had a cranial magnetic resonance imaging scan, which showed hypoxia in the cerebral hemispheres and caudate nucleus on both sides.
Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Sinh Hien, Director, said that the surgical plan for the patient is not immediately set out because the possibility of irreversible brain damage is high. “If only heart surgery makes the patient in a vegetative state, then heart surgery will not be meaningful,” the doctor said.
Luckily, after 13 days of intensive treatment, the woman recovered and her infection gradually stabilized. However, heart failure was difficult to control, so the patient was immediately consulted for urgent surgery.
“When the patient showed signs of consciousness, we decided to operate to resolve the severe infection and heart failure,” Associate Professor Hien said on June 11.
Doctors perform heart surgery on patients. Image: Quang Hung
Assessing the case, Associate Professor Hien said that this was a very serious case where the patient was in a coma for a long time, then underwent heart surgery. This requires resuscitation doctors to put in a lot of effort, experience, and come up with a precise regimen. After two months of treatment, the patient has recovered well and is continuing to be monitored.
Infectious endocarditis is an infection of the inner lining of the heart and heart valves. This infection can be caused by bacteria or fungi. The consequences of the disease are very serious, such as damage to the heart valves and disease spread in other organs.
Factors causing infective endocarditis include people with congenital heart disease (such as ventricular septal defect, patent ductus arteriosus, congenital valvular stenosis, complex congenital heart disease…), people with hypertrophic myocardium, patients with damaged heart valves or artificial heart valves, or previous infective endocarditis.
Infectious endocarditis is very difficult to treat, and sufferers can have recurring symptoms even after leaving the hospital.