Turkey: Hole in heart can be treated sans surgery

By Sahin Oktay

KOCAELI, Turkey (AA) - Child patients with ventricular septal defect, also known as hole in the heart, can be treated without surgery in a Turkish medical faculty.

Evic Zeynep Akgun, a cardiologist at Kocaeli University in Turkey’s Black Sea region, told Anadolu Agency that doctors could perform all the necessary operations in the clinic after the birth of the patients they followed since they were unborn babies.

“Without any surgery, without a pump or without entering the heart-lung machine, all these procedures are performed by opening a vascular access from the leg,” Akgun said.

Akgun, an expert at the department of Child Health and Diseases, went on to say that the treatment takes one to two hours and the patient can be discharged from the hospital within 24 hours.

He noted that eight congenital heart diseases are detected in 1,000 healthy births.

*Writing by Erdogan Cagatay Zontur