Healing Heart Valves, Inspiring Hope

Durdans Heart Centre proudly celebrates 5 years of pioneering successful Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantations (TAVI) in awake patients, without open surgeries.

Durdans Heart Centre, over the past 5 years, has achieved a significant milestone by performing the biggest continued series of successful Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) procedures in Sri Lanka, while establishing itself as the premier institute in Sri Lanka for effectively performing advanced cardiac procedures using state-of-the-art technology.

The aortic valve is the most vital component of the heart's blood pumping mechanism into the entire body and its failure causes chaos in all the vital organs. Factors such as age-related wear and tear, infections or defects from birth can cause the aortic valve to narrow, restricting blood flow which deprives the rest of the body of oxygen and can cause multi-organ failure and untimely death.

Open heart surgery used to be the only option for valve replacement in the past, but every year, many patients who need an aortic valve replacement are deemed to be of high risk and turned down for open-heart surgery, eventually ending up with prolonged heart failure or sudden death. TAVI can be performed in high-risk patients under local anaesthesia while patients remain awake.

At the forefront of this transformative procedure stands Dr. Pandula Athauda-arachchi, a trailblazing consultant interventional cardiologist whose expertise and achievements have earned him international acclaim. Trained in the United Kingdom, with experience at the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, Switzerland and Hungary, he became the first-ever international proctor produced from Sri Lanka, overseeing TAVI procedures in countries including Indonesia and the Philippines.

Dr. Pandula performed the first TAVI at Durdans Heart Centre in 2018, and has since conducted over 13 successful procedures there, many on patients previously deemed unsuitable for conventional treatment due to advanced age, frailty, previous stroke, lung disease, prior heart surgery or kidney failure.

Durdans Heart Centre became the first centre in Sri Lanka to perform both balloon-expandable and self-expandable TAVI, and has performed the country's first Bicuspid aortic valve TAVI, first TAVI in a patient with previous open-heart surgical failure and kidney failure, TAVI in the oldest recorded patient at 85, TAVI in the youngest patient at 60, and a combined TAVI and left main coronary intervention in a single setting.

In 2018, the first all-local-anaesthetic TAVI valve procedure was performed on Mr. Indrasena, an 82-year-old patient, who now celebrates five years of healthy, vibrant living post-surgery.