Three challenging organ transplants, conducted simultaneously, have changed the lives of three critically-ill patients in the city last month.
The transplants kept a team of organ transplant surgeons in Manipal Hospitals on their toes for 18 hours. Within hours of retrieving the organs – heart, liver and one kidney – the doctors transplanted them in three patients simultaneously on the same day.
This was possible thanks to a noble gesture by the husband of a 26-year-old nurse Keerthi (name changed) who donated her vital organs. Ms. Keerthi had suffered cardio-respiratory arrest followed by hypoxic brain damage last month and declared brain dead in Manipal Hospitals on May 2.
Following the donation, the Zonal Coordination Committee of Karnataka (ZCCK) for Organ Transplantation identified suitable recipients for her vital organs. Three of the identified recipients were from our hospital as the blood groups matched, said Sudarshan Ballal, Chairman of Manipal Hospitals.
Dr. Ballal thanked the donor’s family for their generosity even in a moment of grief. “Statistics portray an alarming need for organ transplants in India. It is estimated that every 3 minutes a patient is added to the list of those needing a transplant. The need of the hour is a proactive attitude towards organ donation,” he said.
Heart transplant
It is not always that a cardiac patient, who needs to undergo a transplant urgently, gets the cadaver organ within a day of his discharge from hospital.
Luck shone on 34-year-old Chandrasekhar N. from Whitefield, who was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and required a transplant at the earliest. Following the donation, he was called back within a day of his discharge from the hospital. “This is our first successful heart transplant and the patient has resumed his normal activities,” said Devananda N.S., Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon. He along with Anand Shenoy, Consultant Cardiologist, performed the transplant.
While the liver transplant was conducted by Hepatologist Olithselvan and his team, the renal transplant was conducted by Consultant Nephrologist Vishwanath Siddini and his team.
