CARE conducts heart transplant operation

CARE Hospital has achieved another milestone by carrying out its first and Andhra Pradesh's second cardiac transplantation operation. The other hospital that has carried out a similar operation is city-based Global Hospitals.

The operation carried out by CARE is unique in that the donor was a 10-year old boy and the recipient was 23 years old. An ideal donor for organ donation should be below 50 years and heavier built than the recipient.

The operation was carried out on May 9. The donor was declared brain dead at CARE Hospital at Nampally on the day at 10.05 pm and the heart was harvested from him with the parents' consent and rushed to CARE Hospital at Banjara Hills for implanting it in a heart patient.

The whole operation from harvest and to transplant of the heart organ took place in less than an hour. The operation was conducted by a team of medical and non-medical professionals led by Gopichand Mannam.

The patient, Rama Rao, is recuperating and progressing. Hailing from a poor family, he had been admitted to CARE Hospital, Banjara Hills, for end-stage heart disease. He had been awaiting a heart transplant for the past six months.

Disclosing this to media persons, CARE Hospitals chairman B Soma Raju said that CARE Foundation had met most part of the pre- and post-operation amounting to Rs 5 lakh. He said heart transplantation operation, a rare procedure, was fast picking up in the country.

Gopichand, who led the heart transplantation team at CARE, said that following CARE's new milestone, Andhra Pradesh had become the third state in the country to have recorded two heart transplantations.

Around 50 heart transplants had been conducted in the country since 1994, and but for the lack of awareness among the public on organ donation, the number could have been higher, he said.

Extrapolating statistics from the US of over five lakh deaths due to end-stage heart failures in a population of over 250 million, Gopichand said that the number of patients with advanced stage of heart diseases would be far higher in India with a population of one billion.

Every year lakhs of people die in accidents in the country and last year alone 8,000 died in accidents in Andhra Pradesh. The cause of a majority of deaths are head injuries and brain death and there is vast scope for organ transplantation in such cases, he said.

Gopichand also stressed the importance of an active campaign to education the public on the importance of organ donation in the country.

He also called for a national trauma network on the lines of those abroad to transport organs from donors to recipients in time. The organs should ideally be transported within two hours, he said.