A four-year-old child has undergone a heart transplant at Narayana Health hospital in Bengaluru making it one of the youngest cases of a heart transplant in the city.
The child which hails from Kolkata in West Bengal had a condition - dilated cardiomyopathy since the age of two. Even as his family tried getting him treated in their hometown, his condition only worsened. His struggles began when he was just two.
According to doctors, the disease had weakened his heart’s ability to pump and he was not in a condition to even eat or play. On admission the child’s condition was critical.
As the only treatment for end-stage heart failure is a heart transplant, the medical team advised the family to register with Jeevasarthakathe. The family registered with Jeevasarthakathe in February 2019.
It was after a wait of around 11 months that the child received a suitable heart on December 21, 2019, and the doctors performed the surgery. He was discharged from the hospital within 15 days after surgery and now leading a near-normal life. In fact, the doctors say, a heart transplant can be successfully done in selected cases with an excellent outcome in children as young as less than 1 year age.
Dr Julius Punnen, Heart and Lung Transplant Surgeon, Narayana Health City, said, “Apart from blood match the crucial aspect is the weight match. A patient can receive a heart from someone who is about two and a half times heavier than himself or herself. In this case, as the team had ensured the child was healthy as well as had an optimal weight we could find a matching donor and save his life by performing the heart transplant.”
The transplant surgery lasted for around 4 hours. After the surgery, the child was discharged within 15 days bringing an end to his 11-month long hospital stay.