Successful heart transplantation done on a Jharkhand patient

The city today witnessed a successful lifesaving heart transplantation surgery conducted on a 39-year-old male from Jharkhand after the organ of a brain dead was harvested and airlifted from Bengaluru to Kolkata early this morning.

The entire process was initiated after a 21-year-old youth was declared brain dead at a Bengaluru hospital this morning following a tragic road accident on May 19, a senior official of the private hospital here, where the heart transplantation was done, said.

The youth's family gave their consent to donate his heart after counselled on organ donation at the Bengaluru-unit of the same hospital following which a cardiac transplant team harvested the donor's heart at around 7 AM today, he said.

After that, the live heart was transported through a green corridor from the hospital to Bengaluru airport and then airlifted to Kolkata.

As soon as it reached the city at around 10:45 AM this morning, the live heart was taken via a green corridor from Netaji Subhas Chandra International Airport to the Fortis Hospital in Anandapur, covering nearly 18 kilometers in around 22 minutes, a senior official of Kolkata Traffic police said.

A team of doctors at the hospital performed about a two-hour-long surgery on the patient, who was suffering from Dilated Cardiomyopathy, and was on the waitlist since January 2017, and the transplantation was "successful", he said.

Speaking on the condition of the patient, a senior doctor, who was part of the team which conducted the surgery, said, The patient is under constant observation for next 24 to 48 hours. His condition is stable.