60-year-old Asansol man gets heart clip instead of surgery at Manipal Hospital
Telegraph | 23 December 2025
A 60-year-old man from Asansol, who had a leak in the heart’s mitral valve that reduced its pumping capacity, recently underwent a clip implant at a city hospital.
Ramswaroop could not undergo a conventional open-heart surgery to replace the valve because of his comorbidities.
The doctors implanted the clip, which performs the role of a stitch and fixes the leak.
Dilip Kumar, the director of the cath lab and senior interventional cardiologist at Manipal Hospital, EM Bypass, said the TEER (trans-catheter edge-to-edge repair) procedure that was performed on Ramswaroop offered a safe and effective treatment option for a patient who was at very high risk for a conventional open-heart surgery.
Mild or moderate leaks do not manifest symptoms, but in case of a severe leak, there remains a risk of heart failure, said Kumar.
“Usually, a mitral valve is changed, but if a patient has comorbidities, changing the valve is not an option. Mitral valve TEER is another option available for such patients,” said Kumar.
“We did an opening of the mitral valve, caught the leaflets and put a clip there. The clip performs the function of a stitch and reduces the leak,” he said.
The mitral valve controls the blood flow from the left atrium to the left ventricle.
The valve should only allow a forward flow. When the heart contracts, the aortic valve opens and the blood goes forward in the body. It should not go backwards. The mitral valve closes and opposes the backflow. But when there is a leak, the backflow happens.
Ramswaroop was suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition where the heart becomes enlarged and weak and reduces its pumping capacity.
Kumar said that indigenous clips are now available. Earlier, only foreign clips were available in the market, and many patients could not afford them. The entire procedure cost around ₹30 lakh.
“The cost of the indigenous clips is half of the foreign-made ones. In the case of Ramswaroop, the Indian manufacturer further cut the cost by 50%. The rest of the cost of the procedure was shared between the family, the Manipal Foundation and some NGOs,” said Kumar.
The procedure was done on December 1. He was discharged from the hospital and came back for a check-up a couple of days ago.
“Ramswaroop is now leading a normal and healthy life,” said Kumar.