Hyderabad, Feb. 7

Global Hospitals, Hyderabad, has made history by carrying out the first ever heart transplant in Andhra Pradesh and breathed new life into a 33-year-year-old daily wage earner and bread winner of the family who was afflicted with an end-stage heart disease.

The transplant of the heart, harvested from a brain dead person, was carried out yesterday. The recipient's condition is stable. He is talking and taking fluids. He will remain in the Intensive Care Unit for the next two or three days.

Global Hospitals has undertaken its first heart transplant totally free of cost considering that the patient, K. Ramesh, belonged to the poorest of the poor of Medchal in Ranga Reddy district. (A heart transplant in the Indian context costs Rs.6 lakh to Rs.8 lakh, against Rs.$100000 in the U. S.).

The heart transplantation team, headed by Dr. Alla Gopalakrishna Gokhale, Cardio Thoracic and Transplant Surgeon and Dr. Shailender Singh, Interventional Cardiologist, included Cardiologists Dr. V. Rajasekhar, Dr. S. V. Krishna Rao and Dr. Sumeeth Sinha and Anaesthesiologists Dr. N. V. V. S. Murthy, Dr. Krishna Prasad, Dr. Pyarelal and Dr. Usha. The patient, Ramesh, had been suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy in which the heart is damaged for reasons not known. The symptoms included breathlessness, swelling of legs and inability to move about. As Ramesh did not respond to medical therapy, he was told there was no alternative to a heart transplant for him. He was so sick that doctors concluded he would not live for more than a few weeks. Although he expressed his inability to afford the costs, he was put on the waiting list for a transplant at Global Hospitals.

Global Hospitals received the first information of a cadaver heart being available around 10-15 p.m. on Thursday, February 5 from MOHAN (Multi-Organ Harvesting Aid Network) Foundation. Global Hospitals' doctors went to NIMS, where the family of a person injured in a road accident and was declared brain dead, agreed to donate his organs, and harvested the heart and the liver. The heart transplantation at Global Hospitals was begun around 5-30 a.m. and completed by 10-30 a.m. on Friday

A team of doctors from Global Hospitals, which had undergone training in heart transplantation at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital New York, had returned only on January 30. (The Presbyterian Hospital does 100 heart transplants a year). In less than a week of their return, they had the opportunity of carrying out the first heart transplantation for Andhra Pradesh. "We have the proud privilege of taking heart surgery to its ultimate in Andhra Pradesh", says Dr. Gokhale.

The heart transplant marks a new milestone in Global Hospitals' progress. Conceived and built to undertake multi-organ transplantation, it was formally inaugurated in May 2002. It has so far successfully undertaken eight liver and 34 kidney transplants.

According to Dr. K. Ravindranath, Managing Director, Global Hospitals, the latest transplant exemplifies how the magnanimity of a person fatally injured in a road accident has helped five persons. It also highlights the inter-institutional cooperation. MOHAN (Multi-Organ Harvesting Aid Network) Foundation and NIMS counsellors motivated the kith and kin of the brain-dead patient in NIMS to donate the organs. Forensic experts from Gandhi Medical College and the police facilitated compliance with legal formalities. NIMS and Apollo Hospitals carried out the transplantation of one kidney each and the LV Prasad Eye Institute, the transplantation of an eye. Global Hospitals, which has been doing liver transplantations routinely and was geared up to undertake heart transplantation, carried out both liver and heart transplants. Global Hospitals thus revived two persons stricken with end-stage liver and heart diseases.