Doctors at the Fortis Escorts Heart Institute here have successfully conducted an emergency open heart surgery on an 18-hour-old baby, the youngestto have undergone such a surgery in the country till date, according to the operating physicians.
Dr. K. S. Iyer, executive director, paediatric and congenital heart diseases at FEHI, and his team carried out the operation.
The baby was born in Mathura and within minutes of his birth was declared to have severe breathing difficulty. When two local hospitals there were unable to pinpoint the cause, the child was rushed to a multi-super specialty hospital here that refused to admit him. Mayank was subsequently referred to Dr. Iyer.
“A decision to perform an open heart surgery was taken which involved cutting the chest open and performing the surgery on the muscles, valves, or arteries of the heart,” Dr. Iyer said.
Rapid advances in diagnosis and treatment of paediatric congenital heart defects over the last few decades mean that over 75 per cent of infants born with critical heart diseases can survive beyond the first year of life and many can lead near normal lives thereafter.Dr. Iyer explained that the child was born with an additional defect of abnormal and narrow veins that posed a bigger challenge as the veins had to be treated immediately.
