For people who are suffering from various heart diseases but don’t want to undergo a complex and risky heart operation, there’s good news for you. St. Luke’s Medical Center offers a new alternative – the Extracorporeal Shockwave Myocardial Revascularization (ESMR). This new technology is something that St. Luke’s Medical Center should boast of because it’s the first facility to be introduced in the country.
The therapy is not like the common heart operation which involves scalpels, incisions and bloody procedure but it’s rather a painless, non-invasive and outpatient way of stimulating the development and growth of new blood vessels in the heart. The newborn blood vessels with then supply the patient’s heart with oxygen and will eventually improve its blood flow.
The ESMR treats various heart diseases like:
Myocardial Ischemia – A disease that causes shortage of blood and oxygen supply to the patient’s heart muscles. This can be a very painful heart condition especially if not treated right away. It also causes various heart conditions like angina pectoris, myocardial stunning, myocardial hibernation, ischemic preconditioning/postconditioning and the worst is the acute syndrome and myocardial infarction.
Refractory Angina Pectoris – Usually, this is caused by the myocardial ischemia that results to severe chest pains. This condition cannot be treated by just a simple or standard treatment.
According to medical professionals, the standard method of treating these heart diseases is either angioplasty or cardiac bypass. Although ESMR and the standard methods mentioned produce the same treatment, still the latter is invasive. Now, if the patient is the type of person who gets terrified just by the sight of needle or scalpel, the ESMR is a heaven-sent solution. No blood, painless and easy – this is what the new medical technology can assure the patient.
According to Nuclear Cardiology Department head, Dr. Edward-Bengie Magsombol, when various heart treatment options are crossed-out, the only left alternative is the heart transplant. Now that St. Luke’s Medical Center has this facility, it can be a better option for the patients.
ESMR is being performed by using a special generator. These generators produce low-intensity shockwaves focused at the ischemic myocardial tissue in order to trigger the growth and development of the new blood vessels in the heart. The growth of the new blood vessels helps in supplying blood and oxygen and thus, pain is eliminated.
With the state-of-the-art technology like ESMR, the country’s medical system was again, raised up to a higher extent. The more options the patients have, the bigger their possibility of getting rid the heart diseases they have.