This year, the New Year came a day late for Manoj Kumar. It was on January 2, that he walked out of Caritas Hospital in the outskirts of the town to his rented house nearby after a successful heart transplant.
For the first time, the complex heart transplant surgery was successfully carried out at a non-metro in the country.
“Heart transplant is not new in our country or in Kerala. But we have to surmount heavy odds in successfully conducting the transplant in a non-metro, which lacks many logistical advantages of a metro city,” Rajesh Ramankutty, who headed the team that conducted the surgery, said.
Awareness campaign
The organ will have to be harvested from the donor and brought to the patient (often in a hospital in another town) and the surgery has to be completed within four hours. However, the biggest advantage is the better climate that has emerged during the past two years for organ transplant in the State, thanks to the high profile kidney transplant campaign, which has now spread out to liver and heart sharing, said Dr. Ramankutty.
The Kerala Network for Organ Sharing (KNOS) also provides an effective platform for sharing information about availability of organs to the member hospitals.
Manoj suffered a massive heart attack in January 2014 and by September his heart showed symptoms of failure. Ever since, the doctors were waiting for a heart replacement.
“It was on December 2 night that we got information about the availability of the organ from a private medical college at Thiruvalla. The team rushed to the college and returned after harvesting the organ in less than 30 minutes. The surgery took less than four hours,” Dr. Ramankutty said.
Team ready
He said a team comprising four cardiologists, two heart surgeons, two anaesthetists, five technicians, 25 nursing staff and 15 paramedics were on their toes much before the surgery.
Dr. Ramankutty said doctors were monitoring Manoj and hopeful of rehabilitating him in six months.
In the meantime, Manoj will flag off a mass run being organised in the run-up to the National Games on January 20.
