Yashoda Hospitals Establishes yet another Milestone in Transplantation Surgery

Yashoda Hospitals Establishes yet another Milestone in Transplantation Surgery Performs Life-saving Heart Transplantation on a young mother making Yashoda the only hospital in A.P. to have performed both heart and single lung transplantations successfully

Dec’ 24, 2013, Hyderabad: Yashoda Hospitals performed successful heart transplantation in on Mrs. Venkata Ramya, a 25-year old young mother from Pitthapuram, East Godavari district taking the medical facilities in A.P. one step forward.  Yashoda Hospitals is one of the three centres in India where world-class facilities for both lung and heart transplantations are available underone roof. 

The heart transplantation was performed on 15^th Dec’ 2013 by a team of cardiothoracic surgeons headed by the senior doctor, Chief Cardiothoracic, Transplant and Minimal Access Surgeon and Dr G. Subramanyam, Senior Consultant Anaesthetist, giving a new lease of life to Venkata Ramya by making her move normally again. 

For the past seven years after delivering her baby girl, Ramya had been suffering from a heart condition called ‘Postpartum Cardiomyopathy’, where the heart started failing slowly. This rare condition starts during pregnancy and after delivery, heart condition continues to worsen. Due to this, she was getting breathless while walking and she could not even lie down flat. Her feet were getting swollen. She needed repeated admissions for this heart failure. Her treating Cardiologist at Kakinada suggested that the only option left for her now is heart transplantation and he referred the patient to the senior doctor at Yashoda Hospital, Secunderabad. After almost 2 months of counseling, they understood that there is no other choice and agreed to go for heart transplantation. Ramya was evaluated for heart transplantation by the senior doctor and Dr Rajasekhar, Consultant Cardiologist, Yashoda Hospitals and kept on a waiting list for a heart donor.  She stayed with her husband at Hyderabad after evaluation for nearly a month.    

On the evening of 15th of December 2013, a 21 year male patient was declared brain dead after a motor vehicle accident in another hospital at Hyderabad and his attendants magnanimously agreed to donate the organs to save other people on the death bed.

The senior doctor and Dr Sudhakar, Consultant Anaesthetist went to the donor hospital and evaluated the heart condition. Once they were satisfied, patient was called into the hospital. They were explained about the risks involved and a video consent was taken.

The senior doctor and his team removed the heart from the donor and brought it to Yashoda hospital in a record 10 minute time with the help of police escort. They modified the standard technique of transplantation so that the transplanted heart started getting blood supply within 2 hours after it was removed from the donor. This made the heart work better and patient became conscious and started talking within 10 hours of the surgery. On second post-operative day she started walking, making the recovery similar to bypass surgery.

Joyous with the success, the senior doctor said, “Organ transplantations like heart and lung are the new hope for those suffering from end-stage organ failure. Transplantations not only save lives but also help patients live longer. Our past experience of performing 7 heart transplants helped us reduce the ischemic time to 2 hours which made the recovery of patient very fast like any other routine open heart surgery”. 

Expressing his happiness over this successful heart transplantation, Dr G. S. Rao, Managing Director, Yashoda Group of Hospitals said, “Recognizing the importance of transplantations in saving lives, we’ve established world-class facilities for both heart & lung transplantations. With this surgery, we have taken the medical facilities in A.P. to the next level making us a world-class centre performing the largest number of successful transplantations with fastest recovery. Fast recovery after this rare and difficult operation was possible only because of highly experienced team in heart and lung transplantations in AP”. 

After the promotion of organ donation by State Government through its Jeevandan Scheme, more and more organ donations are happening and this is helping the unfortunate patients including young people with organ failure to get back to normal life.

 Apart from the senior doctor, the surgical team included Dr Viswanath and Dr Dilip Ratti and the Anaesthesia team included Dr Subramanyam, Dr Sudhakar, Dr Madhav and Dr Sai Chandra.

About Yashoda Heart and Lung Institute

Yashoda Heart and Lung Institute, by creating facilities for lung and heart transplantations under one roof, has created new hope to such patients who otherwise do not have the chance to live long. The transplant team at Yashoda has rich experience in performing complicated heart and lung surgeries. The team used the Ventricular Assist Device for the first time in Andhra Pradesh in July 2012 saving a patient’s life. Incidentally the senior doctor also performed the first successful heart transplant in Andhra Pradesh in 2004 and first successful single lung transplant in 2013. He is one of the two surgeons in India who performed heart and lung transplants successfully so far.  

About Yashoda Group of Hospitals

Yashoda Group of Hospitals is a healthcare leader with 3 successful, fully independent, super-specialty hospitals at Secunderabad, Malakpet and Somajiguda with a nursing school and college attached to each hospital. The Group also operates 3 successful Heart Institutes all equipped with state-of-the-art equipment to facilitate round-the-clock emergency services. It is now also pioneering most advanced heart surgeries like Heart and Lung Transplantations, Heart assist device programme and Minimal Access Cardiac surgeries.

The infrastructure of the Group include of over 1710 beds, 700 specialist doctors, 2,100 nurses and 4,500 paramedical and other support staff. Yashoda Group of Hospitals treats over 5 lakh people annually – more than any other private healthcare organisation in the state.