Rare heart transplant successfully performed at Yashoda Hospital

Yashoda Hospital has successfully performed a heart transplant surgery of 25 years old mother, who was suffering with rare but severe heart condition known as Postpartum Cardiomyopathy. In this condition, the heart starts failing slowly during the pregnancy and the condition of expected cum new mother gets worse after the delivery.

The lady, on whom this surgery was performed, has a daughter who is 7 years old. After battling with Postpartum Cardiomyopathy for a long time, she finally went down the blade for a heart transplant where the heart was donated by a young man in his early twenties after he was declared dead in a road accident.

The operation was carried out by Yashoda’s cardiologists Gopala Krishna Gokhale and Dr Rajasekhar on 15 December in Hyderabad.

For Yashoda Hospital, this is the first-of-its-kind heart transplant and 8th overall heart transplant till date. In the pre-transplant exercise, Yashoda Hospital was supported by the Andhra Pradesh government’s health initiative Jeevandhan (meaning organ donation) and the city Traffic Police.

In cases involving heart transplant, the donor’s heart, mostly from brain-dead patients, has to be collected and harvested before transplanting it within 4-5 hours. Crucial to this is the movement of the organ in a carefully operated atmosphere from the donor’s place to the hospital. The early it is executed the more is the success rate.

On average, a heart transplant costs Rs 10-20 lakh in India. The success rate stands at 80 per cent and the 5-year survival rate stood at 75-80 per cent.