Live heart travelled from Chennai to Adyar hospital in seven minutes
This is the first time inter-state organ sharing has taken place
Chennai: Hearts are transferred from one hospital to another in the city and sometimes from Chennai to Coimbatore and Vellore. But, for the first time, a heart was flown from Bengaluru to Chennai to save the life of a 40-year-old man from Mumbai.
Sources confirmed that this was the first time inter-state sharing of an organ has taken place and more such sharing would take place in future. Sources in the private Chennai hospital said that the donor, a 30-year-old woman, met with an accident and suffered brain haemorrhage. “As soon as the heart reached the hospital we started the transplantation and the patient is now doing well,” sources said.
Eminent cardiologist and vice chancellor of Sri Ramachandra University, Dr J.S.N. Murthy, said after harvesting, the heart should be transplanted within four hours.
Dr Nandkishore Kapadia, senior consultant cardiac surgeon of Global Health City, said, “We recently took a private jet on a trial basis and we found that within two-and-a-half hours organs reach here from Coimbatore.
“Earlier the transplantation is done the better is the result as the harvested heart doesn’t get oxygen and blood. If the transplantation crosses more than 5 hours, the success rate comes down,” Dr Kapadia explained.
This is the first time a heart has been flown in from Bengaluru, but earlier a liver was transported like this. With the recent formation of Regional Organ and Tissue Transplantation Organisation (ROTTO) and state headquarters, more such inter-state organ sharing is now possible, say experts.
The Zonal coordination committee of Karnataka for transplantation contacted the state network for organ sharing and when the right match for the heart was found it was immediately flown to the city.
The harvested heart of the woman, who was admitted at the BGS Global Hospital in Bangalore, was brought to the Bangalore airport in an ambulance in 40 minutes covering 42 kms. From there, according to Air India sources, the captain of the flight, Prem Shankar and his crew members convinced 85 passengers into taking off eight minutes before the scheduled departure of 3.30 pm.
While the travel time usually takes an hour, the flight reached Chennai airport at 4.16 pm, thus saving 16 minutes of the total transit time. Four precious minutes were, however, wasted at the Chennai International airport due to a communication gap among the airport authorities.
The four-doctor team of Poulin, K. Raju, Krishna Murali and S.K. Chowdhry came out through main entrance of the airport at 4.25 pm and waited for the ambulance. After permission was granted, the ambulance which had arrived at 3.00 pm was allowed inside the airport via gate number 2 near Air India cargo hangar.
The ambulance was brought back to the airport entrance from the cargo terminal, which is 1.5 km away. The vehicle reached the airport entrance at 4.29 pm and the heart was taken to the hospital by 4.36 pm. A ‘Green corridor’ was created and the traffic on the busy GST road was closed for 25 minutes from 4.10 pm.