Cardiology, Peschiera, the only center in Veneto to carry out septal alcoholisation

L’Pederzoli Hospital in Peschiera del Garda teaches in the context of interventional cardiology and it is the first and only center in Veneto to carry out theseptal alcoholisman innovative procedure that allows the treatment of obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy without having to resort to a scalpel and can prevent the implantation of automatic defibrillators or massive drug therapy.

It was carried out in recent days on a symptomatic patient by the interventional cardiology team led by Professor Imad Sheiban.

There hypertrophic cardiomyopathy it is a rare congenital disease that causes an alteration of blood flow within the heart due to a thickening of the septum, the muscle that divides the right and left cavities of the heart. It affects men and women equally and is often not even diagnosed due to the absence of symptoms and, in many cases, allows one to lead a normal life.

It cannot be excluded that the possible manifestations may involve arrhythmias and, in the most serious cases, cause sudden death but also imply symptoms of obstruction to the outflow of blood from the left ventricle, such as dizziness and fainting, heart failure and myocardial ischemia. At the basis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy there is a genetic mutation, which determines not only myocardial hypertrophy but also an abnormal arrangement of cardiac muscle fibres.

There minimally invasive procedureof septal alcoholization – there are few centers in Italy that use it due to the high specialization it requires – consists of the injection of medical alcohol into a coronary branch that supplies the portion of the septum responsible for the obstruction. The injection of approximately 2 or 3 milliliters of alcohol into the artery that supplies blood to the interventricular septum induces a small controlled infarction which causes a thinning of the interventricular septum and an improvement in the obstruction to the exit of blood from the ventricle, with a similar result to surgery. Patients, within a few days, can return to leading their lives.

This is not the first time that the septal alcoholization procedure is performed in the cardiology department – ​​headed by Dr. Filippo Leonardo – of the Pederzoli Hospital. An increasingly cutting-edge healthcare facility not only in the Verona and Veneto but in Italy.