THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: KIMS Health has successfully carried out its first heart transplant, offering a new lease of life to ten-year-old Diya from Kollam. Dr M I Sahadulla, chairman and MD, said this marks a significant step in the hospital’s two-decade journey in transplant services and it is also the first-of-its-kind in the private sector in South Kerala.
Diya was born with restrictive cardiomyopathy, a rare condition where the heart fails to pump blood effectively, leading to dangerously high lung pressure.
“She needed not just a compatible heart, but a larger and stronger one to withstand the stress,” explained Dr Sowmya Ramanan, Lead Surgeon and Senior Consultant in Pediatric Cardiac Surgery, who headed the procedure.
The donor was a 36-year-old man from Thiruvananthapuram who died following an accident.
The transplant surgery lasted three and a half hours, after which Diya spent two weeks in intensive care before making a steady recovery. E M Najeeb, co-founder, Dr Praveen Muralidharan, Director of Multi-Organ Transplant, and Dr Shaji Palangadan, Head of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery, joined the press conference.