Doctors at the Fortis Malar Hospital performed a heart transplant on a two-year-old boy from Russia with a serious cardiac condition that affected the pumping of the heart.
The patient, Gleb Kudriavtsev from Moscow, was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy when he was a year old. His mother, Nelli, soon realised that they did not have a solution in Russia, so started exploring options around the world. They first went to Germany, where the diagnosis confirmed, but because of the high lung pressure, they could not pursue treatment there. They finally came to India for treatment.
When he arrived, baby Gleb’s condition was critical, with low heart function and signs of poor kidney and lung function, Suresh Rao, Head of critical care and cardiac anaesthesia, Fortis Malar, said. “After a month and a half, during which time he suffered a stroke, the hospital received an alert that there was a suitable heart at Manipal Hospital, Bangalore,” he said.
In an eight-hour long surgery, the heart from the child in West Bengal was transplanted on December 19, 2014. “Even after transplantation, the boy suffered from right ventricular dysfunction caused by pulmonary artery hypertension,” Dr. Rao added.
Speaking of pediatric heart transplantations, K.R. Balakrishnan, Director of Cardiac Sciences, said that with fewer donors, and the need to match the blood type and size, paediatric heart transplants were not common. “There is very little awareness among the people, so very few paediatric hearts are available for transplantation,” he said.
“There are a number of hurdles to performing a successful paediatric cardiac transplantation. In many cases, the weight and the blood type of the donor does not match the recipient, and there is also the issue of transporting hearts,” he added.
Now, Baby Gleb has recovered, but there is a lot to be done in the future. “He is on immunosuppressants, and doctors are still considering how to reduce the risk of Cancer and coronary artery vasculopathy, an accelerated form of coronary artery disease,” Dr. Balakrishnan said, adding that doctors had also evolved technology that would allow heart transplantations even when the blood groups of the children did not match.
The team was now working with Russian doctors to see when they could send Gleb home.