The 70-year-old had suffered a severe heart attack. To complicate matters, the attack created a hole in her heart, a rare occurrence in case of a cardiac arrest.
When Ludhiana resident Satya Devi Gandhi complained of chest pain on June 15, her family’s worst nightmare came true. The 70-year-old had suffered a severe heart attack. To complicate matters, the attack resulted in the rupture of the ventricular septum. In other words, it created a hole in her heart, a rare occurrence in case of a cardiac arrest.
Gandhi was on life support and needed emergency surgery to survive.
Gandhi’s age, high blood pressure, diabetes and asthama made her an extremely high risk patient, and several doctors refused to operate on her as she had only a 50% chance of survival. That is when the family contacted Mumbai’s Asian Heart Institute (AHI).
However, there were other major obstacles in store. “Critical patients are generally not transferred. The patient has to be on life support systems which are battery operated with a life limited to just two hours. The flight from Ludhiana to Mumbai takes five hours,” explained Dr Vijay D’Silva, director, medical affairs and critical care, AHI.
AHI contacted the company that makes the Intra Aortic Balloon Pump and arranged for spare batteries and a technician to accompany D’Silva to Ludhiana.
The patient was then air-lifted in an eight-seater aircraft and brought to Mumbai. “We have a team of doctors who look after evacuation, portable air-worthy equipment, etc. Plus this is an expensive operation as booking the flight costs around Rs1.5 lakh per hour,” said Dr Anil Mehra, managing director, AMAS Medical Services.
Gandhi underwent a 12-hour surgery performed by noted cardiac surgeon Dr Ramakant Panda on Monday. “We had to perform a bypass surgery and a surgery to close the hole,” said D’Silva. “She is in the ICU but is making good progress.”
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