Poets have long extolled alcohol as medicine for a broken heart and now doctors at a Delhi hospital have actually used the soluttion to heal a 47-year-old heart patient. The man was suffering from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a common disorder in which heart muscles grow thick, sometimes causing sudden death.

The doctors made use of a process known as alcohol septal ablation, in which pure alcohol is used to burn the extra mass.

The patient had been suffering from chest pain and shortness of breath on exertion. After a year of futile treatments, he was finally diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which was making it difficult for his heart to pump blood.

"The patient was advised to undergo an open heart surgery. Our team, however, decided to use a new interventional technique called alcohol septal ablation. We occluded the septal artery of his heart with a balloon and administered 1.5 ml of pure alcohol. This alcohol burnt the extra muscle of the heart," said Dr Gajinder Goyal, Head of Cardiology, QRG Hospitals.

The patient was discharged two days after the procedure without any complications. He has been able to do routine activities without any discomfort. Doctor confirmed that there is over 50 per cent reduction in thickness after the procedure, which will further reduce after a period of six months. Unlike the bypass surgery and pacemaker implants, this process is much cheaper and the recovery is fast, doctors said.

A look at the procedure

Alcohol septal ablation requires a thin, flexible tube called catheter, without a balloon at the tip. The cardiologist threads the tube through a blood vessel in the patient’s groin all the way to the artery that carries blood to the septum. Alcohol is then injected through the tube into the area where there is thickness. The alcohol causes some of the patient’s heart muscle cells to shrink. This improves blood flow through the heart and out to the body. The balloon is then deflated and the tube is guided back out of the body.