Pune man set to return home after ‘miraculous’ heart transplant in Chennai

According to his 23-year-old son Rajdeep, “This is the biggest battle my father has fought and it is like a new life that has been gifted to him.”

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“My father has been in and out of hospitals the entire last year, suffering from swelling, breathlessness, water retention problems and then a major heart attack on April 29 this year. With an increasingly weak heart due to cardiomyopthy (heart muscle disease), the only option was a heart transplant,” says Rajdeep, who helps his father in their construction business at Bhosari while managing a cafe at Koregaon Park.

Little did the family know that they would not have to wait for more than a month for the heart transplant. Ramesh was admitted to the Chennai hospital in April end when doctors told him on June 2 about the unfortunate death of a youngster in a road accident. “The family of a young man who died in an accident on June 2 this year in Madurai were willing to donate his organs,” Dr K M Cherian, founder of Frontline Lifeline Hospital, told The Indian Express.

It took all of three hours for the heart to be air-lifted by the hospital’s team from Meenakshi hospital in Madurai. Once the team was back in Chennai, a green corridor was opened. Doctors were given an escort vehicle and roads and traffic intersections in Chennai were closed as the heart was raced to the operation room in matter of minutes.

Cherian, however, says there needs to be more coordination and sensitivity among some private airlines so that the process is expedited when transplants have to be carried out. The Madurai and Chennai police have been extremely cooperative, he says.

“The minute our team arrived in Chennai, the patient was put on a heart lung machine and readied for the transplant,” says Cherian, who has done nearly 48 heart transplants, including on a one-year-old child in 2009.

The transplant on Ramesh was successfully completed and he will be discharged on Monday, Cherian says.

“The road accident victim’s family had consented to donate the youngster’s heart, kidneys, liver and eyes and we are so grateful to them,” says Seema Kondur, Ramesh’s wife who is in Chennai with him.