Medical feat: 19-year-old gets new heart through 9.2-km green corridor in 14 minutes

Doctors at Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, Okhla, Delhi successfully transplanted the heart of a 55-year-old-brain dead donor to a 19-year-old boy who had been suffering from advanced heart failure for one-and-a-half years Tuesday.

#WATCH | An ambulance carrying a donor heart races to Fortis-Escorts Heart Institute in New Delhi. The ambulance completed the 9.2-km dance in 14 minutes amid a traffic rush, giving a 19-year-old a fresh lease of life pic.twitter.com/zrzumTH9ye
— The Indian Express (@IndianExpress) August 30, 2022
The donor had fallen unconscious on the road while going for a morning walk and was immediately admitted to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi with a severe head injury and was declared brain stem dead.
An alert was sent the National Organ Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) about a possible cadaveric heart donor. The heart was allocated to Fortis Escorts Heart Institute NOTTO. An ambulance carrying the team of Fortis doctors swiftly covered a dance of 9.2 km from AIIMS to Fortis in 14 minutes amid a traffic rush, with the help of a green corridor.
A team of doctors led Dr Z S Meharwal, executive director and head of Adult Cardiac Surgery, VAD & Heart Transplantation Programme, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute transplanted the heart to a 19-year-old boy.
The recipient was in an advanced heart failure stage due to Dilated Cardiomyopathy (a type of heart muscle disease that causes the heart chambers (ventricles) to thin and stretch, growing larger). He was admitted with heart failure in the past as well and was waiting for a heart transplant which could not be done due to the non-availability of a heart. The youngster’s condition had reached a critical stage and he was put on medications.
In such cases, generally, a patient undergoes a plethora of tests to determine his current condition, which also includes tests on whether he has the possibility of organ rejection.
Elaborating on the heart transplant procedure, Dr. Z S Meharwal, executive director and head of Adult Cardiac Surgery, VAD & Heart Transplantation Programme, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, said, “Heart transplant was necessary in this case because the patient was in an advanced heart failure stage due to dilated cardiomyopathy. The surgery was challenging for us as there was a significant mismatch in the height and weight of the donor and recipient. The donor was female and short in height, while the recipient was a tall young boy. We could not perform Coronary Angiography (a procedure that uses X-Ray imaging to see your heart’s blood vessels) because of the patient’s condition which is normally recommended.”
Also, during the surgery, there was a mismatch between the aorta (the main artery in the body) of the donor and the recipient. The aorta of the donor was big in diameter while that of the recipient was small. “So, we had to do some technical modifications during the surgery. If the patient was not treated on time, he would have continued to remain in the advanced heart failure stage with increased pulmonary artery pressures and would have become inoperable in the coming days with minimal chances of a heart transplant,” Dr. Meharwal explained.
The surgery lasted for more than eight hours. In addition to routine care which is required for any patient undergoing major cardiac surgery, a heart transplant patient needs optimum immunosuppressive therapy (anti-rejection drugs) to prevent rejection of the donor’s heart the recipient.
“The patient needs good coverage antibiotics to prevent any infection as these patients are prone to infection because of immunosuppressant therapy. The patient is currently stable and we should be able to mobilise him in the next couple of days,” the doctor said.