Chennai: Salvi Patel, 22, a student at Melbourne, was airlifted from Alfred Hospital and brought to a hospital in Chennai for a medical emergency. She underwent a heart transplant last month and is on the road to recovery.
Diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy at Royal Perth Hospital in 2016, Western Australia, the initial assessment of this native of Gujarat, showed an LV ejection fraction of 11 percent on transthoracic echocardiogram.
She was diagnosed with pneumonia at the time of admission to the hospital and a cardiac biopsy was not performed. Recovering at the hospital, she was discharged from Perth Hospital and she moved to Mildura to live with her uncle and aunt. “I began to feel breathless at home and sought medical attention at Mildura hospital. It was found that my left ventricular function was worsening and I was shifted to the Alfred Hospital earlier this year,” she said.
“I required a surgery, but as I was on a student visa, they could not operate me there and suggested I come to Chennai for the same,” she added. “In February this year, I received an email from David McGiffin, Director Cardiothoracic Surgery and Transplantation and Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery in Melbourne, requesting that we take up this case and he said that they would be willing to fund it as well,” said Dr K. M. Cherian of the Frontier Lifeline Hospital.
The young girl arrived in the city on March 9 and was on the waiting list for a heart. The parents of a 19-year-old boy agreed to donate his heart after they lost him and Salvi underwent a heart transplant on March 30. “I feel so much better and relieved to have recovered from the traumatising pain I underwent for over a year,” said she.
