An 18-year-old girl, whose heart was significantly under performing for years, underwent a heart transplant at a Howrah hospital on Saturday.
The heart came from a 23-year-old man who died at SSKM Hospital after a road accident.
After the surgery ended, the girl was still on a ventilator at the Narayana Superspeciality Hospital on Saturday evening. She would remain so at least till Saturday night, said the surgeon who performed the transplant.
Doctors will monitor her condition. She will first be taken off the ventilator and then shifted out of the ICU based on her condition.
The girl was suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition under which the power of the heart’s muscles to contract significantly reduces, said Debasis Das, the surgeon.
“In such a situation, the heart’s performance, its ability to pump blood is severely impacted,” said Das.
As a result, the blood supply to other organs of the body gets affected and the performances of those organs also get impacted owing to less supply of blood.
The surgery star ted around 1pm on Saturday and ended around 5pm.
Earlier a team of doctors had gone to SSKM Hospital to retrieve the organs of the deceased man.
Das said the girl had to be admitted to the hospital multiple times and she was enrolled for a heart transplant about four months back.
All other treatments were done to support the girl but the transplant was necessary.
A team of several doctors were involved in the retrieval of the organs and the subsequent transplant. They include Nilanjan Dutta, Pradeep Narayan, Manish Sharma, Rangan Koley, Shubhadeep Das, Amitabha Chattopadhyay, Sanjiban Ghosh and Jayita Nandy.
“We are immensely grateful to the family of the deceased man. His organs saved many lives. The kidneys were given to SSKM Hospital and the liver went to Delhi,” said Das.
Dhapa resident injured in road accident
A 15-year-old resident of Dhapa, was injured when a goods vehicle hit her on EM Bypass near the Mathpukur crossing on Friday.
Beauty Mondal suffered multiple injuries.
Mondal, who was riding a bicycle, was admitted to SSKM Hospital, police said.