One of the world’s youngest and India’s youngest recipient successfully undergoes complex bilateral lung transplant at MGM Healthcare Chennai
Mumbai: MGM Healthcare, a multi-specialty quaternary care hospital in the heart of the Chennai, today announced that it had successfully performed a complex bilateral lung transplant on a one-year-old boy from Chennai and is one of the world’s youngest and India’s youngest recipient to undergo a bilateral lung transplantation.
A 30-member team under the leadership of Dr. K.R. Balakrishnan, Chairman- Cardiac Sciences and Director – Institute of the Heart and Lung Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support, MGM Healthcare successfully performed this procedure on the patient on August 24th 2021.
Speaking about the patient Dr. Balakrishnan explained, “The patient was diagnosed with bronchopulmonary dysplasia and was put on ventilator from birth as his oxygen saturation was extremely low. It was extremely challenging for us to transplant the lungs as there was size mismatch between the donor and the recipient.
Dr. Suresh Rao K.G, Co-Director of Heart and Lung Transplantation Programme & Mechanical Circulatory Support, MGM Healthcare said, “As the child lungs were not recovering, we did not have any other option other than a bilateral lung transplantation. The child was fortunate to get a pair of lungs from a brain dead pediatric patient. This is the one of the youngest child on whom we have done a lung transplant. The child is stable in the ICU.”
Dr. K.R. Balakrishnan further said, “It is a testimony to the sincerity and skill of our nurses in Chennai that this child is alive today. It is a Herculean task anywhere in the world to perform dual-lung transplant on such a small child without any complications.”
Thanking the hospital, the parents said, “We would like to thank the clinical team led by Dr. Balakrishnan and Dr Suresh Rao at MGM Healthcare for giving our son a fresh lease of life. We would like to extend our gratitude to the nursing team for their diligent service during these testing times for us and the donor family for this extremely generous gift.”