Chennai heart surgeons rescue Bangladesh girl from jaws of death

First time in world four surgeries performed on

five-year old for leaking thoracic aortic aneurysm

Chennai:

It was a fresh new lease of life for five-year old Pushpa Chanisia as the surgeons from Chennai rescued her from the jaws of death when her country’s medics wrote her off.

The last glimmer of hope came through Chime, a trust formed by MIOT hospital, when the parents Mohammed Billal and Shakila Jaffer brought their daughter to Chennai’s MIOT hospital.

Chime took up the entire expenses on them as surgeons of MIOT hospital conducted a successful Leaking Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm Bursting into the lung of a five-year old. Interestingly, this was the first time in world surgery that a surgery was carried fourt times to arrest Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm Bursting andMIOT surgeons were successful.

Dr V V Bashi, chairman of Centre for thoracic and Cardio Vascular Care MIOT hospitals, said the five-year old was referred to us from another hospital with history of coughing out large amount of blood and was advised emergency surgery.

Interestingly, Pushpa had undergone open surgery for patent ductus arteriosus, a disease present from birth where blood from the arota passes directly into the lung through a connection which normally closes at the time of birth, when she was three.

It was normal life for her for 18 months then she started coughing bloodin small amounts which slowly increased. The parents consulted a local doctor who told them that the blood is leaking from the arota and she requires a surgery which is risky and could not be done in Bangladesh.

“The parents brought her to India and admitted her to another hospital where they had put up three stents as an emergency but the leak could not be arrested. It was then we stepped in,” said Dr Bashi.

“After admitting her we found her blood group is AB negative which is difficult to get in an emergency  To tide over the surgery we tried another stent surgery and put two more stents. Because of the technical difficulty caused by complex aneurysm, this was not successful. As we ran out of options , we put her into high risk emergency, which involves high cost and five to six bottles of blood,” he added.

“We opened the front of the chest asnd connected her heart to heart-lung machine and then blood was cooled at 18 degree Celsius.Since the aneurysm was extending into the left lung, it was very difficult to visualize the aneurysm from the midline. So we have to make another incision on the side of the chest to separate it from lung,”said Dr Bashi.

When the temperature reached 18 degree we stopped circulation to the lower part of the body and continued circulation to the brain. After this we opened aneurysm and managed to remove all stents. Then we stitched a synthetic graft to repair the aneurysm and the injury in the lung was also repaired,” the doctor, who headed the surgical team to conduct the operation said.

“To our knowledge this is the first of its kind in a small child who had undergone stenting at such a tender age for aortic aneurysm followed by complex surgery,” he said