The first heart transplantation in east India is being carried out in Fortis Hospital in Kolkata since morning today. The doctors of the hospital said that it would take more than four hours to complete the surgery.
“We will not be able to say whether the transplantation is successful or not, unless 24 hours have passed,” said a doctor at Fortis Hospital.
Dildar Singh, in his forties and son of a businessman in Jharkhand, was admitted to the hospital last week. He was suffering from diabetic cardio myopathy, a condition where uncontrolled sugar level leads to swollen heart muscles beyond permissible level resulting in lack of oxygen and blood circulation to the heart.
Such transplantation has already been carried out successfully in Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai. The surgery is considered risky and has low success rate.
The donor, Varun B.K., died in a road accident yesterday at the Fortis Hospital in Bengaluru. The two hospitals allowed both the families to come together and decide about the donation of Varun's heart.
The state governments of both Karnataka and West Bengal were informed accordingly to help the family and hospital fly the heart to Kolkata from Bengaluru.
The heart was harvested at 7am today and was transported to Bengaluru airport using a green corridor. Despite the political instability in the state, Karnataka administrators took special care to create a green corridor.
In Kolkata, too, Kolkata police and health department joined hands to facilitate the quick pick-up and drop of the harvested heart, at the airport.
“We had to implant the heart within seven hours of its harvesting. But we could do that by four and half hours,” said Arafat Faisal, spokesman of the Fortis Hospital in Kolkata.
He thanked the West Bengal and Karnataka health and police departments for helping the hospital bring the heart from Bengaluru to Kolkata in quick time.
The distance from Kolkata airport to Fortis Hospital—about 10km—was travelled within 19 minutes, said the officials of the West Bengal health department. A senior additional health secretary level officer was at the airport to receive the heart.
Thirty doctors led by Dr Tapas Chowdhury and Dr K.M. Bandana at the hospital are undertaking the transplantation. The hospital refused to reveal the cost of the transplantation.
The doctors are connected with other doctors across India through video conference, said a senior doctor in the hospital.