St Vincent’s Private Hospital Toowoomba performs city’s first orbital atherectomy to veteran cricketer

A veteran cricketer’s life has been transformed after he was the recipient of a procedure not performed in Toowoomba before — involving a drill into his heart. Here’s why it was the best move:

Toowoomba's Michael Lynch, pictured with St Vincent's Private Hospital interventional cardiologist Dr Anudeep Gupta, is the city's first recipient of an orbital atherectomy to remove hardened plaque from the arteries connected to his heart.

Michael Lynch could not understand why a few overs of medium-pace bowling during social cricket was leaving him exhausted.

“I wondered why I was getting knocked up playing cricket when I was bowling,” the 65-year-old said.

Given his family’s history of heart problems, Mr Lynch decided to get his arteries checked for calcium build-up — and the results floored him.

“My mum had had a quadruple bypass, my grandfather passed away early from a heart attack, so I went and got a calcium score test done,” he said.

“A score in between one and 100, you’re fine – mine was 5500.

“One artery was 70 per cent blocked, one was 50 per cent and was 40 per cent.”

But amazingly, Mr Lynch is getting ready to return to the pitch after becoming the first Toowoomba recipient of a relatively new procedure called an orbital atherectomy.

The minimally invasive procedure, which was completed by interventional cardiologists Dr Anudeep Gupta and Dr Harish Aikot at St Vincent’s Private Hospital, involves using a tiny diamond-tipped drill to soften and break down hardened calcium in the patient’s arteries.

Toowoomba's Michael Lynch, pictured with St Vincent's Private Hospital interventional cardiologist Dr Anudeep Gupta, is the city's first recipient of an orbital atherectomy to remove hardened plaque from the arteries connected to his heart.

Dr Gupta said the orbital atherectomy allowed them to install stents in Mr Lynch’s arteries more effectively, which in turn helped reduce the future need for open-heart surgery.

“Once you start getting lots of calcium, stents stop working without modification, the stent can block off, clot off and fail and resulting in a heart attack,” he said.

“Treating calcium is pretty much the hardest thing to do, as an interventional cardiologist.

"In Toowoomba, I’ve actually found that there’s lots of patients with lots of calcium.

“What the new technology, the orbital, does is it’s a diamond-tipped burr drill that goes into the heart arteries and shaves away at the calcium and also cracks it and makes it softer.

“So it essentially becomes, instead of like a rock, it becomes like a sandbag so when you put a stent into it, the stent can treat the lesion properly and it will have the best results with it.”

Dr Gupta, who expected about 20 patients per year to be eligible for an orbital atherectomy improved a patient’s quality of life extensively.

“The procedure itself does have potential complications, as you can appreciate – it’s a drill in the heart, which is diamond tipped,” he said.

“Generally you send people for open-heart surgery for lifesaving conditions, but in Michael's condition it was to improve his quality of life.

“Fixing his artery would improve his quality of life and let him get more blood to the heart, which reduces symptoms.”

After a couple of weeks rest, Mr Lynch said he had a good feeling about his stamina when he chose to open the bowling again.

“I’m told I’m doing well and will be right for cricket training,” he said.

“It will make a difference – I haven’t pushed myself yet, but I reckon it’ll be mickey mouse.”