Doctors in KLE Society’s Dr Prabhakar Kore Hospital conducted a rare heart surgery on a 16-day-old baby recently.
The patient weighing less than 2.5 kg was referred to the hospital from a private hospital.
The child suffered from complaints of bluish skin, lips and nails.
Doctors found that the baby was not receiving enough oxygen-rich blood. It could not be fed, had a rapid heart rate with a weak pulse and was restless.
Paediatric Cardiologist Danish Memon diagnosed that it had Dextro-Transposition of the Great Arteries (d-TGA). It is a very rare birth heart defect that is less frequently diagnosed when the baby is in the mother’s womb.
A permanent solution was found to be surgical repair of the defect, known as the Arterial Switch Operation (ASO).
This neonatal cardiac operation, where surgeons switch the great arteries back to their normal connection to their chamber, has to be done within three weeks of birth.
It is considered among the critical and technically demanding operations in neonatal cardiac surgery.
It was performed by a team led by Paediatric Cardiac Surgeon Gananjay Salve.
The procedure lasted eight hours and the child withstood the surgery well. Anaesthesia back-up service was offered by Anand Vagrali and Sharangouda Patil.
Post-surgical management was challenging as the baby was on a ventilator. However, it was expertly managed by Paediatric Intensivist Nidhi Goel Manvi.
Paediatric Cardiologists Veeresh Manvi and Danish Memon closely monitored the process. The baby was discharged on the 10th day after surgery and it is doing fine now, a release said.
