After transplant, Kerala man lives with two beating hearts

COIMBATORE, JUNE 2017:

 

A 45-year-old man from Kerala became the first person in the country to live with two beating hearts, one of it being a woman's. The man, who suffered a heart failure, underwent a rare heart transplant; instead of having his old heart replaced with a new one, doctors just connected the new heart to the old one so they can share the load.

 

Cardio-thoracic surgeons at Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital knew that the man would have to undergo a heart transplant when they found his heart was functioning at only 10%. But there was a hitch. "As part of the work-up, we found that his lung pressure and lung resistance were extremely high. In such a condition, the newly grafted heart usually fails because it will not be able to overcome the lung pressure," said cardiothoracic surgeon at KMCH Dr Prashanth Vaijyanath, who performed the surgery.

 

In such cases, the options are a heart-lung transplant, fixing an artificial heart on the left and right side (which costs almost Rs 2 crore), or allowing the failing heart to "piggyback" on an efficient new heart. "When a brain dead woman of almost the same age and his size came on Monday, we found a heart that matched his heart's size and chose to try the third option, which is called a heterotopic transplant," said Dr Vaijyanath.

 

The three-and-half hour surgery had the surgeons first opening the patient's chest cavity and creating a small space for the heart in his right side, because the normal heart always lies on the left side. "Once we implanted the new heart, we had to synchronise the beats of the two hearts, which were different in character. That was done with the help of a pacemaker," he said. "We connected the hearts at five places, three connections on the left side of the heart and two on the right side," said the doctor.

 

The entire surgery was done without stopping the native heart. The doctor said this man would be a "balanced person" and genetically fascinating, because he would have not only xy chromosomes but xx chromosomes of a woman too within him.