HYDERABAD: In a remarkable achievement, Yashoda group of Hospitals, Secunderabad, has performed heart transplant surgeries on two terminally ill mothers in a span of two days during the last week of February.
The first heart transplantation was done on a 48-year old woman Rani. Rani, a resident of Nagole and a mother of three has been suffering from acute breathlessness and low blood pressure, when she was admitted to the hospital. Similarly Sanka Padma, 46, hailing from Khammam was already in a life threatening state with a disfunction valve and weak heart muscles. Heart transplantations were performed on both of them by the Jeevandan scheme, a government initiative for the human organ transplantation.
A medical team of 60 surgeons and nursing staff headed by senior heart and lung transplant surgeon Dr AGK Gokhale performed both the surgeries. Speaking about them, Dr Gokhale said that it was only possible due to the timely availability of the hearts from the donors.
“As soon as we realised that they needed the heart transplantation, we have enrolled both of them under the Jeevandan scheme. Rani’s condition was deteriorating and we asked Jeevandan to search for a possible donor throughout the country on an urgent basis. Finally we found a deceased donor at one of the city’s hospitals and sprung into action,” he said.
About the second heart transplant that was flown from Bangalore, Gokhale expressed that the traffic police played an important part.
“This is the first time we have performed an inter-state heart transplantation.
Awareness on Jeevandan Scheme
Dr Swarnalata, member of the Jeevandan Scheme said that people should be made aware of the government’s initiative. “While there are a number of brain dead people lying in the hospital awaiting their death, there are others who lose their lives due to lack of timely availability of the organs,” she said. ‘’There is enough awareness about kidney and liver transplantations but not so much about heart transplantation,” she added.