13-year-old girl on ventilator for two months gets new heart at Sree Chitra Tirunal hospital

Thiruvananthapuram, Jul 25 (PTI) The Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST) here has conducted a five-hour-long heart transplant operation, providing a new lease of life to a 13-year-old girl who had been on ventilator due to severe cardiomyopathy.

With this operation, Sree Chitra, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology (DST) of the Government of India, has joined the group of government hospitals that are making such advanced treatment facilities more accessible.


"The donor heart came from a 47-year-old school teacher who suffered sustained brain haemorrhage due to ruptured intracranial aneurysm and had been declared brain dead at the KIMS HEALTH hospital," the PIB said in a release.


The organ was allocated through the Kerala State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (K-SOTTO) to SCTIMST in accordance with the organ allocation policy of the Government of Kerala.



Kerala Police arranged a green corridor for the quick transport of the organ for the operation, which took place on July 23.


It was the plight of the 13-year-old from Chavakkad, Thrissur, confined to the ICU for the past two months that prompted SCTIMST hospital to look for a donor.


The team consisting of Dr Baiju S Dharan, Dr Vivek V Pillai, Dr Soumya Remanan, Dr Renjith S and Dr Veena Vasudev from the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Dr Harikrishnan S, Dr Krishnamoorthy K M, Dr Deepa S Kumar, Dr Arun Gopalakrishnan and Dr Jyothi Vijay from the Department of Cardiology and Dr Shrinivas V G from the Department of Cardiac Anaesthesia, along with their respective teams, performed the lengthy operation.

They were supported by transplant coordinator Beena Pillai, senior residents of cardiac surgery and cardiac anaesthesia, staff members of Division of Perfusion Technology, Department of Transfusion Medicine and blood bank staff, nursing and technical staff, transport wing, security and biomedical technology wing along with other medical and paramedical staff members of the institute.


The release said the ICMR had helped to establish the comprehensive heart failure programme at SCTIMST, and the institute received the licence to conduct heart transplants last year.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)