Army Institute of Cardio Thoracic Surgery (AICTS) performed Pune’s first heart transplant of this year Monday (January 30).
Family members of a 34-year-old brain-dead man from Indore, Madhya Pradesh, donated his heart to a 53-year-old serving soldier suffering from severe left ventricular failure, which is a serious heart condition.
Corps of Military Police of Southern Command headquarters coordinated with the Pune traffic police and established a green corridor to transport the donor heart from Lohegaon to the AICTS.
Major General D Arora, commandant, AICTS, said the challenge was to find a heart which matched that of the recipient. “The donor had suffered a severe brain injury in a road traffic accident and the family members were willing to donate his organs. The necessary permissions were promptly received from the medical branch, Southern Command, to go ahead with the surgery,” Maj Gen Arora said.
Sandeep Arya, transplant coordinator at Jupiter hospital, Indore, said that the young man had his own business. “He was unmarried and the eldest of three children in the family. He met with an accident on January 20 in Ujjain and the family shifted him to Jupiter Hospital the next day. He did not respond to treatment and was declared brain dead on Jan 29,” Arya said.
As the process involved interstate retrieval, Indian Air Force was approached. South Western Air Command (SWAC), IAF arranged for a fixed-wing aircraft at short notice. A team of cardiac surgeons, anaesthetists, nursing officers and paramedics from the AICTS, led by Col Saurabh Singh, senior adviser, cardiac surgery, was sent to Indore and they retrieved the donor heart early Monday.
The IAF arranged for a green corridor from the hospital to the airport in Indore in liaison with the civil police. An IAF aircraft specially flown to Indore for this mission got the team and donor’s heart in Pune within 90 minutes. The IAF aircraft landed at Lohegaon airport with the donor’s heart at 10.25 am.
Last year, the AICTS performed its first paediatric heart transplant.
Col A Mukhaerjea and his team from Corps of Military Police of Southern Command headquarters coordinated with the Pune traffic police and established a green corridor to transport the donor heart from Lohegaon to the AICTS in 15 minutes, officials said.
Brig Sameer Kumar, head of the department of cardiac surgery and Col Alok Kumar, cardiac anaesthetist, and their team then took over the technically challenging task of heart transplant at the AICTS.
Brig Sameer Kumar said the surgery has gone off well and the patient is being managed at the surgical ICU of the AICTS. The recovery process should be completed in the next 15 days.
The man’s liver was used by Jupiter Hospital for a transplant in a 54-year-old man while one kidney each was sent to Bombay Hospital and Choithram Hospital and Research Centre in Indore. The corneas were kept in the eye bank;
Aarti Gokhale, central coordinator of Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee, Pune, said that the heart was allocated to Pune as per the allocation guidelines of the Regional Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (ROTTO). “Since 2017, 39 heart transplants have been performed in Pune,” Gokhale said.
Last year, the AICTS, a 600-bed super-specialty hospital of the Indian Army and one of the oldest centres of cardiothoracic surgery in India, performed its first paediatric heart transplant.
