Green corridor helps in transplanting pancreas, heart

Chennai: For the first time in the country, an attempt was made at pancreas transplant when an advanced cardiac life support vehicle covered a distance of 18 km within 12 minutes through a green corridor created from Chennai airport to Apollo Hospitals on Greams Road here on Wednesday.    

Generally, the pancreas is transplanted along with kidneys for patients undergoing kidney transplantation for diabetes. However, in this case, the patient’s kidneys were functioning normally.

On Wednesday afternoon, the organs were brought to Chennai on a Jet Airways (9W 2764) flight from Coimbatore at 1:20 pm. Thereafter, a green corridor from airport to Apollo main hospital was created and the distance, which would normally take 45 minutes to an hour, was covered in 12 minutes.  

Along with the pancreas the heart was also harvested from the same patient and flown in at 10.49 am. The pancreas, harvested from a 19-year -old brain dead person (engineering student) was flown in from Coimbatore and successfully transported to Apollo Main Hospitals with the help of Chennai traffic police who created a green corridor from the airport to the hospital.

The recipient is a 33-year-old man from Chennai who has been suffering with insulin dependent diabetes mellitus with “Hypoglycemia unawareness” for the past 14 years.

The organ was transplanted by a team of transplant surgeons at the Centre for Liver Disease and Transplantation, Apollo Hospitals, Chennai. “Our team of three (two doctors and one coordinator) went to Coimbatore late Tuesday evening and brought it on Wednesday.

The pancreas is a very sensitive organ and has to be transplanted quickly and within five hours. The airlines gave us top priority and space to keep the organs. In the airport too immediate clearance was given,” said Dr Anil Vaidya, transplant surgeon, who brought the harvested organ from Coimbatore.

Lauding the efforts of the traffic police he added, “The local support was very important along with the support given by traffic police. The moment we called joint commissioner (traffic) he provided us with the convoy vehicle”.

Meanwhile, the heart from the same donor was also transplanted on a 14-year-old patient who was admitted to Fortis Malar Hospital and had suffered severe heart failure. The heart was brought to Chennai airport at 10:49 am.

The last time such a transplant was done by Apollo took place four months ago when a liver was transplanted.