Half of baby’s heart reconstructed
5 Oct 2012 6:07 AM IST
In a first-of-its-kind surgery in India, doctors at Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital operated upon a 46-day-old baby to recreate half of her heart, giving her a normal life she would have otherwise missed, medical officials said Thursday.
A look at six-month-old Isha [name changed] does not indicate any abnormality with her, but the baby has had an open heart surgery to rectify her underdeveloped heart.
The baby, who hails from Rohtak in Haryana, was brought to Ganga Ram when she was just 40 days old.
‘She would keep crying, did not take milk, and was getting weak day by day. Our doctor in Rohtak told us that she has a problem in her heart and we were referred to Ganga Ram,’ said Isha’s mother, who did not want her identity disclosed.
Doctors at the premier Delhi hospital detected that the left ventricle of her heart was underdeveloped.
‘The heart has two halves, the left ventricle and the right ventricle. The right ventricle pumps blood to the lungs for purification, while the left ventricle pumps blood to the rest of the body,’ explained Raja Joshi, Senior Consultant Pediatric Cardiac Surgeon at Ganga Ram.
‘Her left ventricle was not developed,’ he said. The doctor said usually in such cases, doctors remove the left half and a surgery is done so that right part of the heart does the work for both halves.
‘However, when the child grows up, the right half of the heart is unable to bear the load, and succumbs to it at the young age of 24-25,’ he said. In Isha’s case, the doctors decided to conduct two complicated surgeries together, to make her left ventricle work.
The procedures known as the Norwood operation and the Rastelli operation were performed together, called the ‘Yasui procedure’.
A look at six-month-old Isha [name changed] does not indicate any abnormality with her, but the baby has had an open heart surgery to rectify her underdeveloped heart.
The baby, who hails from Rohtak in Haryana, was brought to Ganga Ram when she was just 40 days old.
‘She would keep crying, did not take milk, and was getting weak day by day. Our doctor in Rohtak told us that she has a problem in her heart and we were referred to Ganga Ram,’ said Isha’s mother, who did not want her identity disclosed.
Doctors at the premier Delhi hospital detected that the left ventricle of her heart was underdeveloped.
‘The heart has two halves, the left ventricle and the right ventricle. The right ventricle pumps blood to the lungs for purification, while the left ventricle pumps blood to the rest of the body,’ explained Raja Joshi, Senior Consultant Pediatric Cardiac Surgeon at Ganga Ram.
‘Her left ventricle was not developed,’ he said. The doctor said usually in such cases, doctors remove the left half and a surgery is done so that right part of the heart does the work for both halves.
‘However, when the child grows up, the right half of the heart is unable to bear the load, and succumbs to it at the young age of 24-25,’ he said. In Isha’s case, the doctors decided to conduct two complicated surgeries together, to make her left ventricle work.
The procedures known as the Norwood operation and the Rastelli operation were performed together, called the ‘Yasui procedure’.
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