Man Left With Two Beating Hearts Post a ‘Piggybank Transplant’

The procedure made way for the donor’s heart to be placed between the right lung & the original heart of the patient

‘Piggyback Heart Transplant’ allows both the hearts - the donor’s and the recipient’s - to be placed alongside each other, without removing the latter.

(Photo: iStockphoto)

In a rare incident, a man was left with two beating hearts after he underwent a heart transplant surgery in Hyderabad in India, as per a report in The Hindu.

The patient, a 56-year-old man, was brought to the Apollo Hospital in Jubilee Hills to undergo a cardiac surgery. The plan was to attempt a heart replacement surgery. But the doctors realised that the donor heart was of ‘normal fist-size’ as compared to the ‘small football’ sized heart of the recipient. The donor’s heart was found to be too small for the recipient, as per the report.

Since the patient was in an unstable condition, the doctors decided to go ahead with a ‘Piggyback Heart Transplant’ which basically allows both the hearts - the donor’s and the recipient’s - to be placed alongside each other, without removing the latter.

Two hearts - on left is patient’s own heart and on right is the donor’s heart.(Photo Courtesy: Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad)

Cardio-thoracic Surgeon, A. Gopala Krishna Gokhale, who performed the surgery told The Hindu that only 150 piggybank heart transplants had ever been reported. 

The procedure, which lasted for seven hours, made way for the donor’s heart to be placed between the right lung and the original heart of the patient.

Two hearts in the patient complement each other to facilitate circulation, but beat at different rates. It is once-in-a-lifetime procedure a doctor performs. Patient’s blood pressures are close to normal and he is stable. But there will be other issues in future.

As told to <i><a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/man-ends-up-with-two-hearts-after-surgery/article22717440.ece">The Hindu</a></i>

The donor heart belonged to a 17-year-old, Mekala Naveen Kumar, who was declared brain dead on February 16.

The first ‘Piggyback Heart Transplant’ was performed by Dr Christiaan Barnard, a South African cardiac surgeon, back in 1974.

(With inputs from The Hindu)