At 1.13 p.m. on Saturday, the chartered flight from Bengaluru carrying the live donor heart landed at Begumpet airport. The alert traffic and security officials of Hyderabad made sure that the bustling Begumpet-Paradise main road was empty. The ambulance with the donor heart and the doctors cruised at high speeds and in 2.45 minutes reached Yashoda Hospitals, Secunderabad. By 1.30 p.m., the live beating heart of the donor was safely in the operation theatre and by 6.30 p.m. the transplant surgery was completed.
Approximately, it took about 90 minutes for the doctors to harvest the live heart from the deceased at Victoria Hospital in Bengaluru and reach the operation table of Yashoda Hospital, Secunderabad. The medical miracle that overcame barriers of distance promises to give a fresh lease of life to a 46-year-old housewife Padma, who hails from Kothagudem, Khammam. Post surgery, the young homemaker has been shifted to ICU and would be in close observation for the next few days.
It all started with a phone call at around 3 a.m. on Saturday from Jeevandan officials to surgeons at Yashoda Hospitals. “We had requested for a donor heart to hospitals in Chennai and Bangalore. All of a sudden we got a call from Victoria Hospital about the possible availability of a donor heart. We relayed the information to Yashoda Hospitals immediately,” says in-charge, Jeevandan, Dr. K. Swarnalatha.
The information about a possible live heart donor triggered spontaneous action from Yashoda Hospital surgeons. By 7 a.m., Dr. A.G.K. Gokhale, the heart transplant specialist, six others were on a chartered flight and flew to Bengaluru. “In Bengaluru, HAL distance between HAL airport and Victoria Hospital was 15 kilometres. We completed that distance in the ambulance in 15 minutes. Such complex inter-State procedures are only possible with the help of traffic and police authorities,” Dr. Gokhale said.
The donor of live heart was a 30-year-old-man Pundit Shivraya Baje, a resident of Maharashtra and working in a private company in Bengaluru. On Thursday, February 26, Mr. Shivraya was injured grievously in a road accident and was immediately shifted to Victoria Hospital, Bengaluru. On Friday, February 27, he was declared brain dead and his brother Guru Siddapa and uncle decided to donate the heart.
According to hospital doctors, the recipient housewife was a patient of Dilated Cardiomyopathy, a heart condition where the hearts muscles expands, become weak and is unable to pump blood. After visiting several heart specialists, Murali, Padma’s husband, brought her to Dr. Gokhale, who advised for heart transplant. The family of Padma had registered Padma with Jeevandan two months ago. The cost of logistics, including chartered flight was borne by the Yashoda Hospitals.
