Girish gets a new heart again, doctors term it a miracle

KOCHI: When Palakkad-native Girish Kumar was admitted to Lisie hospital with fever, neither he nor the doctors who gave him a new heart last year would have thought that he would soon be in the operation theatre ready to undergo a second heart transplant in a span of nine months.
But the thirty-nine-year-old techie working with WIPRO underwent a successful second heart transplant on March 6 under emergency conditions following two cardiac arrests in as many days after he got a heart donor from a brain dead patient in another hospital in Kochi.
The man behind the first successful heart retransplantation in the country, Dr Jose Chacko Periappuram, calls it a miracle as the patient goes home on the 38th day after his surgery.
"We were not sure about his undergoing a second heart transplant. Getting a donor with the right match, his age, it all just fell in place at the right time. Just as we were discussing whether he should undergo a valve replacement, which was a high risk solution, the call came to the Kerala network for organ sharing (KNOS) that there was a brain dead patient whose family was willing to donate his heart and other organs. Somehow we got the strength and confidence to undertake the operation which took the team a total of 10 hours, including harvesting the heart."
Girish who underwent a heart surgery on June 4 last year was slowly returning to normalcy when he developed fever which led to an infection in his tricystic valve. "Instead of working in Bangalore, he was on a work assignment from home when he fell ill and was admitted to the hospital on February 15," his close relative said.
He suffered a cardiac arrest on February 27 after being resuscitated. As his condition weakened he was put on the ventilator on March 2. He suffered a second cardiac arrest on March 5. According to the hospital authorities, the KNOS alert of a donor came at 8pm on March 5 when the team was discussing the possible options for the patient.
"Our team left to harvest the heart of the brain dead patient from Alappuzha whose family had donated his kidneys and liver to other patients. While the surgery for harvesting the heart began at 3.30am, doctors started operating on Girish at 6am. Girish's new heart started beating at around 10am on March 6," said Dr Jacob Abraham.
Dr Jose Chacko said a heart retransplantation can be termed successful if the patient is discharged without any major issues in a period of 30 days.
"In India, where heart transplants are yet to come up in a big way, retransplantation is a major milestone as far as heart surgery in India is concerned."
Hospital authorities said the heart transplant surgery cost around Rs 5 lakh.