Cardiologist Dr. Shalin Thakore has for the first time in the state performed stem cell therapy on a cardiac patient. The doctor and his team is also the first in the country to use intra-coronary injection of stem cell technique.

Announcing this, Dr. Thakore and Dr. Hemanshu Patel said that traditional technique using stem cells from bone marrow is quite prevalent, but they were the first to use stem cells from peripheral blood for the therapy. This saves patient from painful and time consuming bone marrow technique. They have used it on five patients and the results are very impressive.

They said that the first patient they treated in June this year. The patient who had only 30 percent pumping of the heart now has 55 percent while the normal pumping of a heart is 60 percent. Dr. Thakore said that the technique would be further improved and the results would be better.

In the case of poor heart pumping stem cell therapy can work wonder. He said that the technique was being used abroad but was successfully tried by him in India. To a question about cost, he said that it was costlier than bone marrow technique with total cost being around Rs.75,000.

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