Dr Yee Kok Meng

21/07/2025

A Heart Attack is a medical emergency, and the key to surviving is to seek medical treatment as soon as possible! It's therefore important to recognize the symptoms early and get help immediately!

20/07/2025

A fantastic night of music at the PJPAC…. featuring some of the most beautiful movie soundtracks ever written, and some of my favourites too….a salute to cinema indeed! Can you guess which movies they are from?

01/07/2025

It’s 9:15pm, 1 st July 2025… just finished my last case for the day! Tired, but the cath lab team is happy….time to go home for dinner.

Today marks my 20th anniversary at Pantai Hospital KL. I can still recall the first day I started work here on the 1st July 2005….. didn’t seem that long ago. Time has flown by so fast, but it has been an incredible 2 decades, and a real privilege getting to know all of you here at Pantai - friends, colleagues and patients!

Here’s to the next 20yrs!…..

29/06/2025

Too old for heart treatment? ❤️‍🩹

An 87 yr old lady presented a month ago with unstable angina and fluid in her lungs (heart failure). Due to her age, the patient was not keen for any invasive surgery. So she was treated conservatively with medications, but a few weeks after discharged from hospital she presented again with worsening chest pains and fluid in her lungs again. Now having presented twice in a short space of time, I felt it was prudent to investigate her further despite her age. Her family agreed and an urgent coronary angiogram was done - it demonstrated a critical 99% blockage at the origin of the Left Main Stem( main artery that supplies the left heart) and a second 90% stenosis in the Right Coronary Artery too! (see pics below)….It was no wonder why her heart was so sick, as there was hardly any blood supply to her heart! And she was lucky she had not collapsed yet.

Immediate coronary angioplasty and stenting to the Left Main Stem and Right Coronary Artery was carried out and the patient was discharged home well a few days later.

The case highlights why age should not be a barrier for heart treatment these days. There are many people out there who think that heart operations are too “high risk” in the elderly and would rather opt for a conservative approach. Whilst no doubt age does increase your surgical risk, recent advances in medical technology have made many heart procedures safer and more feasible even in the elderly. Just because you are old, doesn’t mean that there are no treatment options available - do go and see your physician or cardiologist if you are unwell, regardless of your age!

23/06/2025

Sunday evening dinner at Basuba Thai in Bangsar, catching up with an old friend visiting from Singapore, Dr Howard Foo. Howard and I were uni mates, we studied medicine together in Edinburgh over 30yrs ago. How time flies….

15/06/2025

Sunday breakfast with my daughters. Father’s Day is the one day of the year they get up early enough to cook breakfast for me! 🤣
Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!

15/06/2025

To all the Fathers out there, wishing you a day filled with love, laughter, and joy!

07/06/2025

To all my Muslim friends and colleagues celebrating, wishing you and your family a heartwarming Eid filled with love and joy!

30/05/2025

You know about cholesterol, but have you heard about uric acid's potential impact on your heart? Research suggests a connection between elevated uric acid and heart issues. Could this lesser-known factor be relevant to your heart health? Uncover the details here.

23/05/2025

A.I. and Robotics Surgery seems to be the buzzwords in medicine these days! What about the use of robotics in Cardiology?

The idea of Robotic angioplasties or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures sounds like a fantastic one - as it potentially allow the doctor to perform the operations remotely behind a shielded cockpit - therefore reducing the occupational hazards associated with the job. Less radiation exposure means less cancer risks, and also less orthopedic related injuries resulting from all those heavy lead gowns that we have to wear all the time! No more back pains after a long case (hooray!….)

The first early studies looking at this was recently published (see link below). The PRECISION and PRECISION GRXu studies are the first set of studies to systematically address the safety and efficacy of robotic PCI in a broad range of patients. The studies found that robotic PCI in selected cases were not only feasible, but was safe and highly effective.

So is robotic angioplasty the future? Perhaps, but I don’t think we are quite there yet. I am still skeptical whether it can be replicated in complex angioplasty cases where a lot of decision making relies on experience and the “touch and feel” of the wires etc etc, and this will be lost if the angioplasty is done remotely…. Nonetheless maybe one day in the future, this will not be an issue due to advances in newer technology. It is an exciting thought that one day angioplasty can be performed remotely ….Imagine this, if there was an emergency at the hospital, instead of rushing off to the hospital, the cardiologist can then perform the angioplasty remotely from the living room of his/her home, or …..perhaps even from a beach in Langkawi!

Researchers reviewed years of data from two different Corindus systems, highlighting the consistently high clinical and technical success rates.

23/05/2025

Au revoir Paris! Till we meet again….

23/05/2025

Paris at night…. all good things must come to an end, last night in the City of Love, time to “balik kampung” after this…..