Artificial heart surgeon Dr. Mukesh Hariawala, is set to introduce a unique low-cost “triple heart therapy” in India to help patients with diabetes who cannot afford expensive bypass operations.
“I am pleased that cutting edge Angiogenesis Therapy will help the non affording poor patients with heart disease in my motherland India and rest of the world, thus reducing the global economic burden of healthcare,” Hariawala was quote by New York Daily News. Hariawala, who has done pioneering work in Angiogenesis research at Harvard in Boston, said Triple Heart Therapy” involves spontaneous development of new blood vessels in the heart by laser stimulation and subsequent injection of patient’s own stem cells harvested from bone marrow.Indian-American Hariawala will receive “India’s Most Admired Surgeon 2012” award on September 21, for pioneering work on angiogenesis or growth of new blood vessels to aid healing and become the first non-resident of India to receive this award.
Hariawala, who holds a special honorary visiting cardiac surgeon appointment at Mumbai’s Jaslok Hospital, also plans to bring to India next year the artificial Titanium Heart or Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) implant that can play the role of a supplementary heart. Powered by lithium ion battery, in the USA it plays a stopgap role, until a transplant heart is available (as was in the case of Vice President Dick Cheney). Hariawala, who himself has not played any research role in development of this device and is only responsible for taking the technology to India, hopes to get regulatory approvals in India by 2013. In India it will be offered not as a bridge to transplantation but a permanent solution also called “destination therapy,” he said.
