The 16-year-old Mohan Kumar from Ramanagara district, who was suffering from multiple cardiac ailments and would have suffered an untimely death, got a new lease of life at Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research.
“Mohan was brought to the hospital on January 15 with complaints of breathlessness and easy fatigue. We found that he was suffering from aortic valve stenosis and mitral stenosis (a disease where both the aortic values are mitral valves are much narrower than normal), because of which the blood flow was far beyond normal and this was causing intense difficulty in breathing,” said Dr I.B. Vijayalakshmi, Pediatric Cardiologist, who treated Mohan along with her team.
The case got all the more complicated as the doctors found on initial diagnosis that the teenager was also suffering from Situs Inversus, which is a congenital condition in which the major visceral organs are reversed or mirrored from their normal positions.
“Normally, our heart is on the left and liver on the right. But with Mohan, the organs were at opposite places. This made the case complicated. Since Mohan was struggling to breathe, we conducted an emergency surgery on January 16. Had it been delayed, Mohan would have probably died,” she added.
Dr Vijaylakshmi told Deccan Chronicle, “Since there was an obstruction in his right vein, we had to be very cautious. We made a small incision in his jugular vein and through his left vein we opened up the aortic and mitral valve (generally known as aortic balloon valvotomy and balloon mitral valvotomy). The patient is now doing fine and will be discharged from the hospital. Meanwhile, he has to take an injection once in three weeks to prevent the valve from any infection.”
It was one of the rarest and first of its kind cases in the state. One in every 20,000 children suffers from situs inversus. But Mohan’s case was extreme as he was suffering from multiple problems. She said: “In such cases the chances of survival are very low. Mohan would have otherwise had to undergo a major surgery and change the two valves. That meant he would have been under treatment for the rest of his life. In Mohan's case it was completely avoided.”
Mohan’s father Naina Prakash said: “He was suffering for the last few years. We took him to a couple of private hospitals, but there was no improvement. Finally at Jayadeva, he was treated under Yeshaswani insurance scheme without any cost to us. I had never thought that my son would get cured. I come from a farming background and did not have enough money to provide him with better treatment.”
