Personal Profile
Assessing and treating patients with potentially life threatening heart diseases leaves no room for complacency or error. Appropriate investigation followed by sympathetic reassurance is the key to returning an individual to a normal life.
Dr Chitkara is skilled in all aspects of adult cardiology (including chest pain / angina, palpitation / arrhythmia, dizziness, breathlessness, high blood pressure / hypertension, high cholesterol, heart murmur, heart failure and cardiomyopathy assessment, coronary calcium score assessment, coronary risk factor profile assessment, BUPA Wellness, Lifescan assessment. He has a specialist interest in coronary angiography/angioplasty & stent insertion and non-invasive cardiac imaging.
Dr Chitkara is highly experienced in many aspects of heart disease, his expertise have been acquired from a long, traditional training programme at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester. He was awarded an M.D in 2008 after a period of research in intervention at the University of Leicester. He subsequently undertook an Interventional Fellowship at the highly renowned Leeds General Infirmary and gained a wealth of experience in Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI).
He has performed at least 5,000 coronary angiograms and 2,500 simple and complex PCI procedures, primarily via a radial route and considers himself to be a radial operator. Dr Chitkara was instrumental in establishing primary angioplasty for the acute management of myocardial infarction (heart attack) at The Royal Derby Hospital, and he has also successfully established an uncontrolled hypertension clinic.
Dr Chitkara is also an expert in non-coronary interventional/preventive cardiology and has other diverse clinical interests.
Coronary angiography, coronary angioplasty and Stent Insertion
Dr Chitkara regularly performs coronary angioplasty procedures to improve Angina symptoms and reduce the chances of having a heart attack. The primary angioplasty for myocardial infarction (heart attack) treatment has been shown to save more lives than the conventional treatment for heart attacks with intravenous clot-busting medication.
He is highly experienced in transradial coronary procedures and trains other cardiologists in this technique. The transradial approach for coronary angiography and angioplasty (& stent insertion) procedures involves using the artery in the wrist (radial artery) to introduce the coronary catheter rather than the groin (femoral artery).
This transradial approach for angiography and angioplasty allows patients to stand or walk immediately after the coronary procedure and avoids the need for bed rest for 4 hours (required for the groin femoral approach).
Besides patient comfort, there are proven clinical advantages of the transradial approach - there is less risk of bleeding, and fewer incidents of vascular (blood vessel) complications compared to femoral route. Dr Chitkara performs the vast majority of procedures via the radial (wrist) artery.
In fact, patients who have experienced both methods, and who require a repeat procedure actually specifically request a transradial approach.
