CHENNAI: Doctors at the MGM Healthcare Hospital implanted two artificial heart pumps known as ‘Berlin Heart’ on a 3-year-old Russian boy recently. Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami congratulated the doctors’ team, as for the first time in Southeast Asia, Middle East and Africa, a surgery involving two artificial heart pumps to support both the right and left ventricles, was performed.
Lev Fedorenko was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy, a condition where the walls of the lower chambers of the heart — ventricles — are too rigid to expand and receive any blood. The boy came to MGM Healthcare Hospital in 2019 and was kept waiting for a cadaver heart. By then, his condition deteriorated, leaving doctors with not much of choice but go for an artificial heart pump imported from Berlin.
Expressing his best wishes to the team, the CM said, “I appreciate MGM Healthcare for the surgery that too on a foreign child when the whole world is fighting against Covid. This surgery has only stressed the fact that Tamil Nadu is a destination of medical tourism.”