Pranav first interstate organ donor

CHENNAI/KOCHI: The heart and lungs of a Kerala  teenager airlifted to Chennai were successfully transplanted on a 24-year-old heart patient from Maharashtra at Fortis Malar Hospital, Adayar, on Tuesday evening.

The organs of Pranav, 19, hailing from Kayamkulam, who was declared brain-dead following a bike accident on Monday, were harvested by a team of doctors at Lakeshore Hospital in Kochi.

The organs reached Chennai airport about 2 p.m. and were rushed to the hospital located about 12 km away.

The ambulance carrying the organs covered the entire distance in about nine minutes, thanks to perfect coordination by the police and medical teams.

According to sources, the ambulance which left the airport at 2.11 p.m. reached Fortis Malar at 2.20 p.m. traversing the arterial areas of Kathipara, Raj Bhavan, Cancer Institute and Madhya Kailash.

Earlier, marking another milestone in the history of organ donation in Kerala,  a Deccan Aviation chartered flight took off from the Cochin international airport carrying the heart and lungs of Pranav around 12.30 p.m.

It took 28 minutes for the ambulance to ferry the organ to the airport by road from Lakeshore Hospital, covering a distance of 37.6 km.

The first interstate organ transplantation from Kerala was accomplished by the clinical co-ordination between Lakeshore and Fortis Malar Hospital.

After Pranav’s brain death was confirmed around noon on Monday, his father Harilal gave his consent to donate his  organs.  Later,  Dr Sujith Vasudan confirmed the brain death for the state government by 10 p.m.

The harvesting was done by a team led by Dr Philip G. Thomas,  multi-organ transplant director of Lakeshore Hospital,   and Dr Mohan Mathew,  emergency care head,  who were joined by a team led by Fortis Malar Hospital director and transplant surgeon Dr K.R. Balakrishnan and chief anaesthetist Dr Suresh Rao.

His  liver, kidneys, small intestine and  eyes too were harvested. The liver was transplanted on a 39-year-old Kasargod native and a kidney on a 54-year-old native of Alappuzha at the Lakeshore Hospital.

Another kidney was transplanted on a patient at Kozhikode Medical College while the small intestine was transplanted on a patient at AIMS, Kochi.

Sources in Chennai said  that a team of doctors under Dr. K. R. Balakrishnan  performed the surgery at Fortis Malar Hospital  a little past 5 p.m.

The recipient was suffering from a congenital heart disease (hole in the heart) from a young age and this had affected his lungs.

His condition had worsened when he consulted the doctors and by this time it was too late to rectify the defect and the only option  was transplantation.

Owing to the severity of his condition, the patient who was on the waiting list, was pushed up on the transplant list for the twin-organs transplantation.

This is probably for the first time the organs airlifted from Kochi were transplanted on a recipient here.

Apart from Fortis Malar, Apollo Hospitals, Global and Dr. Cherian heart foundation have successfully transplanted organs brought from Bengaluru and Hyderabad in the past.