Published:Wednesday | June 22, 2016 | 12:00 AM

For the first time in the Caribbean region, surgeons at Health City, Cayman Islands, have successfully performed an operation which relieves serious hypertension.

Senior cardiologist and electrophysiologist at Health City, Cayman Islands, Dr Ravi Kishore, performed the procedure, known as renal denervation, on Caymanian Allan Ebanks, who had been diagnosed with resistant hypertension symptoms that were not being controlled by conventional treatment.

“It was so bad sometimes that I couldn’t walk, climb steps, without having to stop,” said Ebanks.

According to Kishore, Ebanks’ condition was very serious when he arrived at the Joint Commission International-accredited facility.

“Mr Allan Ebanks came to us with very severe hypertension. His blood pressure was not controlled in spite of four different medications at maximal doses,” he said.

Kishore believes there is a real need for renal denervation because hypertension has become a significant, and growing, global health issue.

Hypertension is associated with conditions such as heart attacks, heart failure, stroke, acute coronary syndrome, renal failure, and death; and therapeutic solutions are mainly based on lifestyle change and medication.

Among patients with hypertension, some are unable to achieve adequate blood-pressure control, despite the use of multiple medications and change in diet and lifestyle. Refractory hypertensive patients, as they are described, are intensively medicated, and have almost double the cardiovascular mortality.

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