The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) is the only centre in North India to have performed live transmission of a complex coronary angioplasty procedure to the USA.

A PGI spokesperson said that on Saturday, the surgery was transmitted live from the PGI’s catheterisation lab of Advance Cardiac Centre (ACC) to 13th Annual Complex Cardiovascular Catheter Therapeutics (C3) conference held in Orlando, USA.

A renowned doctor from the cardiology department, Professor Dr. Rajesh Vijayavergiya conducted the complex and technically challenging coronary angioplasty on a 60-year-old woman. She was admitted to the cardiac centre when she complained of frequent chest pains.

Speaking about the surgery, Vijayvergiya said that it was “technically challenging and required great technical skills” along with the use of advanced hardware.

He said that the left main is one of the most important and main vessels to supply blood to the heart and treating the same is always a battle of nerves.

Only a handful of centres in India perform such kind of complex procedures on a regular basis with use of advanced imaging modalities like intra-vascular ultrasound (IVUS) and optical coherence tomography (OCT). PGIMER is one such centre which has made India proud.