Thiruvananthapuram: Getting a heart transplant still makes news and bring accolades to the medical team that successfully performs the operation, but a techie in Kerala has made history by undergoing a second heart transplant in a Kochi hospital.
That makes 39-year-old Gireesh Kumar, an IT professional employed by Wipro in Bengaluru, a unique case in medical records. Counting his original heart, Kumar is now living yet another innings of his life with a third heart.
The surgery was performed at the Lissie Hospital in Kochi by a team of doctors headed by cardiothoracic surgeon Jose Chacko Periappuram. Hospital officials said the patient should be able to get back to his normal routine within six months.
What makes Kumar’s case even more unusual is that he underwent his first heart transplant operation only in June 2013.
On that occasion, a transplant was necessitated by an enlarged heart condition. He had then received the heart from a brain-dead patient in Kochi.
However, an infection in a heart valve necessitated another heart transplant, which was considered risky.
Thanks to the high level of awareness about organ donation in Kerala, a heart was once again harvested from another brain-dead patient at a Kochi hospital.
Kumar underwent the second heart transplant procedure in early March this year, just over nine months after his first transplant operation in June 2013. Before the latest procedure, the patient suffered two cardiac arrests, too, and it was a veritable life-and-death situation going into the second transplant.
This week, Kumar was discharged from hospital after nearly a month and a half of recuperation, following the second transplant.
The retransplant of a heart for Kumar also meant a feather in Periappuram’s cap.
The doctor, who is known for the first human-to-human heart transplant in the state, is now perhaps the first doctor in the country to perform a successful heart re-transplantation procedure. The information on organ availability was provided by the Kerala Network for Organ Sharing.
