Chennai: Indian doctors conclusively planned to set an extra heart in human body for the patients who would seek heart transplants or piggyback transplant that discarded hearts for terminally ill patients.
The successful experiment was performed on two dogs to see if it could help those with a weak heart survive.
While giving interview to MCR, the Senior Surgeon Kamlesh Gupta told, “The new heart placed in the abdomen doesn’t replace the original heart, but supports it in performing its job.
“We successfully placed a heart in dog’s tummy.”
The Frontier lifeline team said, “The state transport authority allows retrieving “misfit” hearts from donors for “Piggyback transplant” in the patients not fit for a full-fledged (developed) heart transplant.”
Last Tuesday it had been told that doctors had started their experiments by transplanting one extra heart in tummies of two dogs and on December 10, 2017 experts admitted that they might do larger human trials to see if it will be successful. Transtan member Secretary Dr. P Balaji said, “We will be forwarding the recommendation to the government.”
He added, “We will not take donors heart whose capacity is less than 30 %.
“Such patients will require a left ventricular assist device, a mechanical pump implanted inside the chest to help a weak heart pump blood.
“That machine costs up to 1 crore (one hundred thousand dollars.”
However, there would be a large number of surgical risks, he said, “Heterotrophic abdominal heart transplants, leave the patient existing organ in place unlike a heart transplant. The new heart doesn’t replace the heart but helps it do its job.”
“It can be bridge to transplant until the patients get fit, or it can just be the treatment required.”
He explained that during the experiment team connected the don0r heart to abdominal portion of the aorta and the major blood vessels in the abdomen.
Where there are disadvantages of technology, it could also act as substitute for expensive heart assistive devices and pumps.
Reporter: Syeda Faiza Bukhari
