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Journalism of Courage
Doctors performed a complex heart-transplant surgery on a 16-year-old boy at DPU Super Specialty Hospital in Pimpri. The patient (name withheld on request), a student and resident of Pune, was suffering from viral myocarditis – a viral heart infection wherein heart muscles had grown weak and led to heart failure.
The patient was evaluated at Pimpri’s hospital and prescribed suitable medication. Despite this, his condition continued to deteriorate.
The patient was in dire need of a heart transplant and had been on a waiting list for two years. The vital organ was received on February 7 from another city hospital with the donor being an 11-year-old boy who was declared brain dead after a road accident.
With consent from the child’s family, a team from DPU hospital immediately went to retrieve the organ. The challenge was to harvest the organ and complete the transplant within four hours of harvesting. To address this, a green corridor was created from the city hospital to DPU hospital.
The surgery, led by Dr Anurag Garg, HOD Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery in DPU hospital, was completed within three hours of retrieving the organ. To ensure that the recipient’s body did not reject the organ, doctors had to suppress the child’s immune response before the surgery and then observe if the organ was functioning correctly.
After post-transplant care for three weeks, the 16-year-old patient was discharged.
The departments of Critical Care medicine, Cardiology, and CVTS of DPU hospital co-ordinated to ensure a successful outcome to the challenging case. Dr Anurag Garg said they wanted to ensure that the body accepted and adapted well to the new heart, adding, “We were lucky to get a perfectly matching heart.”
