INDIAN HEART FOR AMERICAN
Posted on: 07/Aug/2010 8:11:22 AM
Days of Indians have to go to USA or elsewhere for heart transplant have passed. It’s destination India for world class Heart transplantation. An American has undergone successfully Heart transplantation in Apollo Hospital in Chennai, what more the person got his Heart transplanted is the First American to under this treatment in India and also the oldest.
The recipients, thanks to Coronary Artery Disease, had a previous bypass surgery, had stents placed inside his heart and had a pacemaker. Despite all this, his heart function was about 28 per cent and in January, doctors back home in Minneapolis told him that he required a heart transplant within a year, failing which he would die, T. Sunder, consultant cardiac surgeon, Apollo Hospitals, explained.
However, the American recounted in a press conference on Thursday, it could have taken him a year and a half to get a heart back home. He had meanwhile, read of the facilities for heart transplant in India, checked with some friends and decided to make the trip to India to get a new heart.
According to the patient, he undertook the trip despite objection from people in his place on going to India for the treatment.
“We could easily handle the case. The only unpredictability was whether we would get a donor for him that had us thinking,” Dr. Ramesh said. As per the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, a cadaveric organ can be used on a non-Indian patient only if a local/national recipient cannot be found.
The American and his wife of six months landed up in Chennai and had to wait for the heart.
They waited for six months, with the patient`s condition deteriorating over that period.
M.R. Girinath, chief cardio vascular surgeon, explained that the chances of finding a heart that was immunologically and physically compatible with the recipient were rather low.
But On the night of July 21, the American got really lucky. A brain dead donor`s 36-year old heart was available but there were no other takers.
Mr. Girinath called up the State co-ordinator for the Cadaver Transplant Programme seeking a go-ahead to use the heart on the foreigner.
Once the sanction came, the hospital performed the transplant, working eight hours to put an Indian heart into an American.The patient has since been discharged and as his wife says, looks 15 years younger.
He now climbs stairs and is even raring to tango with his wife, making a “magical” recovery.The surgery and post-operative phase cost him about 50,000 USD.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Reddy said while cadaver donation had started off in a big way in Tamil Nadu, “we are still not using all the hearts that become available for transplantation.”
The next step would be optimal utilisation of all the hearts from cadaveric donors to save the lives of many more people.
