In a breakthrough for treating abnormal narrowing of branching arteries, scientists have developed a new stenting technique called ‘Nano Crush’ that offers an easy, long-term treatment for the condition.

The technique, developed by a team of doctors at Fortis Hospital, Anandapur in Kolkata was presented at the European Bifurcation Club meeting held in the Netherlands recently.

The treatment of stenosis or abnormal narrowing at the branching points of arteries is a major challenge for interventional cardiologists.

Traditional stents placed at such points often compromise one of the branches. Existing treatments for stenosis involve more metal and are difficult to execute.

The Nano Crush technique is an easy and effective method of stenting the branching arteries, as it does not affect the blood flow in any of the branches and offers a long-term solution, according to the researchers led by Dr Shuvanan Ray, Chief of Cardiology at Fortis Kolkata.

“The classical stenting technique is time-consuming, difficult, technically demanding and at times, leads to incomplete revascularisation,” said Ray.

“This triggered the thought of developing a new and effective technique with lesser adverse events,” he said.

The technique has shown promising results when tested on a sample size of 70 patients.

“We have patients with more than four years follow-up and we are confident of the effectiveness of the technique,” researchers said.

“Going by the impressive outcome, the Nano Crush method may be applied widely among patients with stenosis at branching points of arteries,” said Ray, who led the team comprising of Dr Prithwiraj Bhattacharya, Dr Priyam Mukherjee and Dr Siddhartha Bandhopadhya.

“This technique ensures minimal metal load with immediate and long-term results. It is an improvement over the two-stent technique of bifurcation, which is difficult and cannot be performed in all patients,” the cardiologist said.

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