September 29, 2009
Reprinted with Permission of the Daily Republic | www.DailyRepublic.netBy Barry Eberling/DAILY REPUBLIC
FAIRFIELD -- Dr. Gurinder Dhillon and a four-person team inserted a catheter into the coronary artery of a sedated 77-year-old Vacaville woman on Tuesday and used it to inflate a tiny balloon within the artery.
The expanding balloon pressed against a tiny mesh coil, which in turn crushed plaque into the artery wall. An 80 percent blockage got cleared up. The result: The woman should get relief from shortness of breath and chest pains.
"We're not reinventing the wheel," said Dhillon, an interventional cardiologist at NorthBay Medical Center, when the procedure had ended.
Indeed, Dhillon has been doing coronary angioplasty since 1990 and has been at NorthBay Medical Center since 1991. But neither he nor anyone else had done the procedure -- also called percutaneous coronary intervention -- in Solano County before August.
In past years, the woman would have had a catheter placed in a coronary artery at NorthBay to look for blockages. Should doctors have found a problem, they would have had to wait and done the angioplasty at either John Muir Medical Center in Contra County or Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa County.
No Solano County hospital offered angioplasties. Local doctors couldn't find a problem and then correct it during the same procedure. The patient and the family members who wanted to be with them had to travel.
In April, NorthBay Medical Center opened a $4.6 million surgical suite where doctors can perform open heart surgery. That provided the emergency backup needed for coronary angioplasty. NorthBay in late August started offering the procedure in a cardiac catheterization lab recently remodeled at a cost of $3.6 million.
Dhillon expects coronary angioplasty to be an everyday occurrence at NorthBay Medical Center. The Vacaville woman's procedure was the 20th done there in about a month.
Plus, NorthBay Medical Center at some point will also be able to perform emergency coronary angioplasty for people who are having heart attacks and need the procedure quickly. That could save 90 minutes of time, Dhillon said, since the patient won't have to be transported to another county. That could also save lives, he said.
Dhillon and Dr. Cyrus Mancherje can both perform the procedure at NorthBay Medical Center. Five other physicians are completing the requirements that will allow them to do so.
NorthBay's mission statement is compassionate care, advanced medicine, close to home, said Diana Sullivan, NorthBay's director for cardiovascular service line. The new Heart and Vascular Center makes coronary angioplasty close to home in Solano County.
Reach Barry Eberling at 425-4646, ext. 232, or beberling@dailyrepublic.net.
