Surgeons in Chennai, India, transplanted on Thursday, the heart of a 3-year-old girl, the country’s youngest multi-organ donor, onto a 21-month-old boy from Ahmedabad who was admitted in Frontier Lifeline Hospital for severe cardiomyopathy (a disease of the heart muscle) and other structural problems in his heart.
Tamanna, the donor, was declared brain dead in a road accident in Bangalore that killed her mother Nisha, a physiotherapist and left her father, Renil Joseph a 34-year-old businessman from Kerala, with multiple injuries.When Manipal Hospital broached the subject of multi-organ donation, Renil Joseph tearfully agreed to donate his wife’s eyes and his daughter’s eyes, kidneys, heart and liver for transplantation.
Manipal hospital called up doctors in Chennai and a team of doctors from Frontier Lifeline Hospital rushed in a chartered flight to Bangalore, got clearance to land at HAL airport and returned with the country’s youngest donor-heart that was placed in the youngest recipient in a procedure that lasted all of 2 hours and 42 minutes. That the donor had the universal blood group O+, made things easier, said the surgeons.
Dr. K.M. Cherian and his team at Frontier Lifeline Hospital said that this entire operation was made possible with the cooperation of Chennai Traffic police, airport and private airline staff, co-ordination between the transplant teams of both hospitals and most importantly, the donor child’s father who agreed for the transplantation while he was still recovering from the traumatizing loss of his dear ones.
Source-Medindia
THK/SK
