Kolkata: For the first time in eastern India, an 18-year-old boy is undergoing a combined heart-and-lung transplant at the state’s premier hospital – the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education & Research (IPGMER).
This is also perhaps the first instance of a public hospital in the country of transplanting both the heart and lung to a single recipient.Doctors at the state-run hospital are scheduled to conduct two other transplant surgeries on two more patients through Monday night.
Only eight days ago, SSKM doctors had conducted a lung transplant — a first for a government hospital in eastern India. While the lung recipient is recovering well, the possibility of the heart-and-lung transplant on the same recipient rose after the family of Arun Kule (52) agreed to donate all his organs after the Makhna Falta resident was declared brain dead at the hospital’s Trauma Care Centre (TCC). According to SSKM Hospital sources, the recipient of the heart and lung is a teenager with congenital heart disease (CHD) that has also impacted his lungs function severely. The boy is battling end-stage failure of both organs.
“Transplanting only the heart would not have been enough to ensure oxygenation to the boy’s system,” said a doctor on the transplant team.
The hospital officials had got two teams ready — one for the lungs and the other for the heart — and had been preparing the recipient with pre-transplant medications and tests since Sunday night.
Till reports came in last the organs from the deceased donor were being harvested and the transplant surgery was yet to start. Sources said the surgery would take eight to 10 hours and indicated it to go on till Tuesday wee hours.
“Lung transplant itself is most difficult and challenging of all organ transplant surgery. Combined transplant along with the heart makes it even more challenging. A government hospital taking up such daunting surgery is quite remarkable,” said a Kolkata based transplant surgeon not related to IPGMER.
Sources said that even for lung transplant along there are only a couple of government hospitals in India like AIIMS and PGI Chandigarh that conduct lung transplant surgery. Even in the private healthcare set up, including in the south where deceased organ donation graph is better, only a handful of private hospitals have conducted combined heart and lung transplant.
The donor had met with road traffic accident and was admitted at IPGMER’s TCC few days ago. On getting the consent from the family, Regional Organ & Tissue Transplant Organisation (ROTTO), East, allocated the heart, lungs, liver and one kidney to IPGMER while another kidney was given to Command Hospital Kolkata. Two more IPGMER transplant teams will also be taking up the liver and the kidney surgery though the night.