Matters of the heart can seldom wait. On the night of June 26, T. Venkata Sai Manohar, 24, was declared brain dead at a hospital in Hyderabad. A team from Frontier Lifeline Hospital in Chennai flew out to Hyderabad to harvest his heart for transplant on a 45-year-old man with ischemic cardiomyopathy, a condition wherein the heart muscles are unable to pump effectively.
This involved precise planning and coordinated action involving doctors, police personnel, and teams at hospitals in the two cities. The heart was harvested by 3.30 a.m. on June 27 in Hyderabad and, by 7.30 a.m., it was in Chennai.
A green corridor set up by the Hyderabad traffic police helped carry the heart from the hospital to the airport, approximately 30 km, in 20 minutes. The traffic police in Chennai covered the 16 km between the airport and the hospital in 10 minutes, said Sanjay Cherian, vice president of the hospital.
Madhu Sankar, consultant cardiac surgeon, was part of the team which carried out the transplant. “The patient is recuperating well. This would not have been possible without the help of the traffic police in both the cities,” Dr. Sanjay said.
The car in which Sai Manohar and family were travelling was hit by a truck. They were travelling to Hyderabad from their native town Kothagudem in Khammam district, 270 km from Hyderabad. His father, T. Adityan; mother, T. Jayasree; and sister Sravya survived. Sai Manohar sustained head injuries.
He was rushed to the nearby Kamineni Hospitals, L.B. Nagar. The attending neurosurgeons and officials from Jeevandan, the organ donation programme run by the Telangana State government, said, despite all attempts, Sai Manohar could not be revived. He was declared brain dead on July 25.
“The family was disturbed. But, when we told them of the importance of organ donation, his father, mother, and sister were forthcoming and immediately accepted. We retrieved the heart, two kidneys, liver, and two cornea,” Bhanu Prakash, the medical doctor who co-ordinated the organ donation, said.
Frequent sharing of information on availability of organs between Jeevandan officials in Telangana and their counterparts in Chennai made the transplant possible.
“We share information on availability of donor organs on a daily basis with our counterparts in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. We alerted officials in Chennai who immediately came forward to transport the donor heart. We also alerted the local police here who helped in regulating the traffic while it was being transported from L.B. Nagar to Shamshabad airport,” Swarnalatha, doctor and in-charge of Jeevandan, said.
The efforts of doctors, the police, and Jeevandan functionaries in the successful harvest of a heart in Hyderabad and its transplant in Chennai.
