In less than 20 minutes, a pair of lungs was rushed from Chennai airport, where the organs landed at 4.10 p.m., to Global Hospitals, where a patient was waiting in the operation theatre – via a green corridor.
The lungs, doctors at the hospital said, were harvested from a 29-year-old man from Visakhapatnam, who was involved in a road accident. Alapati Suryanarayana, a schoolteacher, had been riding pillion when the accident took place on March 28. The next day, he was shifted to Care Hospital in Maharanipeta. Around 7.30 p.m. on March 29, Mr. Suryanarayana was declared brain dead.
“After consent from his father to harvest the organs, a team from our hospital led by Govini Balasubramani flew into Visakhapatnam early on Monday morning and harvested the lungs,” said R. Balaji, head of medical services, at Global Hospitals in Chennai.
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The lungs were taken in an ambulance accompanied by a police escort to the airport for a 2.45 p.m. commercial flight. It tool about 12 minutes for the ambulance to get to the Visakhapatnam airport, where it was quickly put on the flight, allowed in as hand luggage. All the traffic lights were operated manually en route. During peak hours, it would have taken the lungs at least 30 minutes to reach the airport from the hospital.
The lungs were sent to Chennai after it was found that they were not needed in Andhra Pradesh or Telangana. While the heart could not be used for transplants, the liver and one of the kidneys were used at Care Hospital, and the other kidney went to Apollo Hospital in Visakhapatnam.
The corneas were taken by the Mohsin Eye Bank in Visakhapatnam.
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At Global Hospital in Chennai, the recipient, a man, had been prepped for surgery since 3.30 p.m. As soon as the lungs arrived at 4.30 p.m., the surgery, a complex, long procedure began and is expected to be completed late on Monday night.
“Only the lungs of our patient were in bad shape. His heart was fine. He has been waiting for more than three months for a lung transplant,” Dr. Balaji said.
From October 2008 to date, there have been 60 lung transplants in Tamil Nadu. Four of these organs have come from outside the State.
(Additional reporting by G. Narasimha Rao and Sumit Bhattacharjee in Visakhapatnam)