There is an old saying that doctors are second to god on this earth. No other profession occupies the same status as that of the medical profession - which is the noblest profession. This proves 100% right as we talk about Hyderabad’s Apollo Hospital surgeons, who have saved a patient from the clutches of death through a remarkable operation.
A 56-year-old patient, whose family members literally "gave up", saw a ray of hope in the most unexpected way. The patient was dying of heart-failure, when the doctors at Apollo were notified that a compatible donor heart -somewhere 160kms away - had just become available. The donor heart was that of a 17-year-old guy who was declared brain dead in Karimnagar. What was supposed to be a three and a half hour journey - became a mere two hour-journey all thanks to Karimnagar ‘super cop’ Traffic Inspector Seetha Reddy - who - in a very short time - created a a green corridor for transportation of the heart to Hyderabad without traffic snarls. Traffic officials along with a team of doctors from ‘Apollo Reach’ in Karimnagar, where the donor was declared brain-dead, started at 6.50 a.m. and reached Apollo Hospital in Jubilee hills at 8.50 am. It is to be noted that the heart will survive only for four hours after it is removed from the donor patient - before it has to be restarted for the surgery.i
It was supposed to be a regular heart replacement, but when the donor heart arrived, every doctor at Apollo were in for a shock. The donor heart was of normal fist-size while the recipient’s heart was the size of a small football - in simple terms, the donor’s heart was too small for the recipient. On the other side, the patient’s lung blood pressure had shot up four times above normal level besides his aortic systole pressure falling down. Time had run out. It is then, cardio-thoracic surgeon - Alla Gopala Krishna Gokhale - knew he had to attempt a radical procedure. The team under Gokhale’s direction decided to put the donor’s heart “alongside” the patient’s heart. The procedure, colloquially referred to as “Piggyback Heart Transplant”, does not require removal of the deceased heart.
In the surgery, doctors cut away some part of the patient heart’s pericardium, to facilitate placing the new heart. The donor’s heart was finally squeezed between the right lung and the original heart. “Two hearts in the patient complement each other to facilitate circulation, but beat at different rates. It is once-in-a-lifetime procedure a doctor performs. Patient’s blood pressures are close to normal and he is stable,” Dr. Ghokle said to The Hindu.
The patient now has a complex electrocardiogram pattern. The so-called “piggyback” transplantation technique was first developed by Christaan Barnard, a South African cardiac surgeon, who conducted the first procedure in 1974. Since then, it has only been performed around 150 times worldwide. The patient now joins a short list of lucky individuals who are alive and well thanks to two independently beating hearts!
Here is the video of the Piggyback Heart Transplant: (viewer discretion advised)
