A heart and a pair of lungs that were harvested from a 41-year-old brain dead donor were flown from Coimbatore and transplanted on to a 16-year-old boy in a private hospital in Chennai on Thursday.
Green corridors were created to enable quick road transport of the organs from the private hospital in Coimbatore to Coimbatore airport and from Chennai airport to MGM Healthcare where doctors performed the transplant. The ambulance carrying the organs reached the hospital in 18 minutes from the Chennai airport, according to a press release.
The boy from Karnataka was diagnosed with congenital cyanotic heart disease with severe pulmonary artery hypertension with a single ventricle. K.R.Balakrishnan, chairman and director of Heart and Lung Transplant Programme, MGM Healthcare, found that he had bleeding in the lungs and put him on ECMO on October 22. It was declared that the heart and lungs were beyond repair and he would need an immediate heart-lung transplant.
The 41-year-old, who was an organ donor, was declared brain dead due to subarachnoid haemorrhage.
The traffic police of both Coimbatore and Chennai opened the green corridors. The organs landed in Chennai at 12 noon.
Prashanth Rajagopalan, director of MGM Healthcare, said this was the hospital's first heart-lung transplant, the release added.
