Hyderabad: A Hyderabadi man became a Whovian’s dream come true when he went into a surgery with one heart and came out with two. In one of only 150 such cases, the 56-year-old man suffering from end stage heart failure had a life saving transplant done, which left him with two hearts.
After the man was rushed into the operating theatre at the Apollo Hospital in Hyderabad, the doctors realised that 12-year-old Mekala Kumar’s (donor) heart was too small. Seeing that there was a discrepancy, the doctors decided to perform what is referred to as a “piggyback transplant” on the man. The patient is one of only 150 people alive to have undergone this procedure.
Dr. Gokhale, the surgeon said that he was left with no choice once the patient’s lung blood pressure rose to four times the normal. He inserted the donor’s heart next to the recipient’s after cutting away part of the pericardium.
It is reported that the organs connected by the heartbeats are not in unison as of yet.
