6-year-old with critical heart ailment saved after surgery

Mumbai, May 23 (IANS) A six-year-old farmer's son from Aurangabad, suffering from a complex heart defect, was saved after surgery at the Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital & Research Centre here, an official said on Tuesday.

The patient, Sanket More, was suffering from complex problems - his heart chambers and arteries were interchanged, there was a large hole in the heart, the artery to the lungs was narrow, and the heart was located on the right side of the chest instead of the normal left.

All this resulted in extremely poor supply of blood to the lungs for purification, the coronary arterial courses were too crowded for an area to be chosen to connect the heart and lungs with the interposition conduits, doctors said.

After considering various options, a team of paediatric and heart specialists decided to perform a complex heart repair surgery on the child on May 19, with a ready Plan B if Plan A failed.

The operation went with clock-work precision, reducing the surgery time as well as time required to use the bypass machine while the heart was being repaired, in turn resulting in less injury to the lungs and the heart, doctors said.

As a result, the child could be taken off the ventilator the very next day (May 20) after the surgery. His blood pressure medication ran for a short while. He has been kept in the ICU and is now taking food orally.

More - who comes from a very poor farmer's family - is making good progress and is expected to remain in the hospital for another five-six days.

Senior Paediatric Cardiologist Shreepal Jain said the case highlighted team work, meticulous planning and perfect execution in the entire complex procedure on the child.

"Very few hospitals in the country have the kind of surgical expertise and infrastructure required to carry out such a complex surgery on a child. We have provided Sanket with a near-normal heart and a superior quality of life," Jain said.

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