CHENNAI: One-year-old Ashmita became a beneficiary of Viagra, when the blue pill was powdered and given to her for something other than its original purpose: To help manage her ventilation after surgery.
The girl was born with a congenital heart condition in which her pulmonary veins, which carry oxygen-rich blood from the lungs to the left portion of the heart, carried them to the right portion instead. The condition is known as total anomalous pulmonary venous drainage.
Two weeks after her birth, Ashmita was operated on at Malar Hospital to re-direct the blood flow to the left of her heart. But in a rare aftermath, Ashmita was once again admitted three months ago, this time because all four of her pulmonary veins had narrowed.
“When Ashmita came in, she had very high lung pressure of 130 mm (normal is 20 mm) and suffered a cardiac arrest in the Intensive Care Unit. We resuscitated her and decided to do a second surgery,’’ said Dr K R Balakrishnan, director of cardiac sciences at the hospital. The condition had arisen because the portion of the heart that had originally been operated upon had not grown with the baby, he said.
After an innovative ‘suture-less’ surgery to correct the narrowing of the veins, the challenge was to manage the ventilation.
Ashmita was put on a ventilator for 48 days. Yet her lung pressure was high enough to be life-threatening. It was then that doctors decided to try Viagra, which had been reported in studies to help drop pulmonary pressure.
Doctors powdered and administered the Viagra pill in small but regular doses.
“I have never seen such dramatic improvement. Her lung pressure immediately dropped,’’ said Dr Balakrishnan.
Ashmita, who celebrated her first birthday in the ICU last week, was discharged on Monday.