NEW DELHI: A youth suffering from a rare cardiac anomaly got a new lease of life at the AIIMS, New Delhi, on Thursday after the heart of a 17-year-old brain-dead girl in Vadodara was flown to the national capital and transplanted in him.
This was the third heart transplant at the AIIMS this year. The other two were conducted in mid-February and early March, before the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed. The 20-year-old youth, a resident of West Delhi, suffered from congenital heart defect, a condition known as Ebstein’s anomaly. Because of this, his heart had become very weak and its right section was not able to pump blood. He had been visiting AIIMS for almost four years for treatment. “In the last six months, his condition deteriorated. He had become very sick and bed-ridden and urgently needed a heart transplant,” Dr Milind Hote, a professor in the Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery, said. “We received information from National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation about the availability of a donor heart from Gujarat,” Dr Hote said.
An AIIMS team went to Vadodara on Thursday morning, retrieved the heart and flew back to Delhi by afternoon. It was then transplanted in the youth following a nearly seven-hour-long surgery. The Delhi Police on created an 18-km-long green corridor for the ambulance carrying the heart from the city airport to the AIIMS. It took just 12 minutes to transport the heart from Terminal two of the airport to the hospital. “The youth is admitted in the ICU after the surgery, and his condition is stable,” Dr Hote said.
“The entire exercise was coordinated by the Organ Retrieval Banking Organization, AIIMS. The Indigo team and the Delhi police acted promptly and extended their full support to ensure the harvested heart reached from the donor hospital to AIIMS within a short time,” he said.