Bhubaneswar: Newborn with heart defect gets new life

D-TGA is a birth defect of the heart in which two main arteries - pulmonary artery and the aorta carrying blood out of the heart - are switched from their normal positions. 
Bhubaneswar: Newborn with heart defect gets new life

BHUBANESWAR:  A four-day-old girl suffering from dextro-transposition of the great arteries (D-TGA), a cardiac disease, got a new lease of life due to swift intervention by a team of doctors at the Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital here.

D-TGA is a birth defect of the heart in which two main arteries - pulmonary artery and the aorta carrying blood out of the heart - are switched from their normal positions.  The baby, weighing around 2.3 kg, came to the hospital when her oxygen saturation level was less than 50 per cent (pc). She was immediately rushed to the neo-natal ICU as the saturation level was coming down fast.

Cardiologist Dr Dibya Ranjan Behera said his team had to conduct an emergent procedure called Balloon Atrial Septostomy (BAS) and performed patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) stenting. While BAS led to the creation of a hole in the heart, PDA stenting helped towards maintaining the link between the two major blood pipes, aorta and pulmonary artery, he said and added the two combined procedures resulted in instant improvement in the baby’s oxygen saturation from 40 pc to 95 pc.

The baby was extubated and stabilised in the NICU for seven days. A team of doctors led by Dr Jagdish Sahoo and Dr Abhilipsa Acharya managed the baby before she was successfully referred to Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology at Thiruvananthapuram where corrective surgery was done on her.

Explaining D-TGA disease, he described it as a life threatening congenital cyanotic heart problem which usually surfaced in the first few days of life. “The child suddenly turns blue, becomes lethargic and shows breathing distress and oxygen saturation falls to less than 90 pc,” he said. He said awareness about congenital heart problem in new born babies and children in Odisha is very low.

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