New Delhi, Aug 31 (IANS) Describing the infant with a protruding heart as a “miracle boy”, doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Monday said the five-day-old boy was suffering from multiple disorders, including a hole in the heart.
“During a complete check-up we found the baby has multiple disorders. Apart from the protruding heart, he also has a hole in his heart and has a single pump (for pumping blood),” A.K. Bisoi, a cardiologist and additional professor at the Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery Department of AIIMS, told IANS.

The doctor, who is incharge of the five-member team looking into the case, said a heart normally has two pumps.

The infant was brought to the premier institute on Friday when he was just two days old by his father Chander Manjhi.

Kept in the ICCU (intensive cardiac care unit) of the Cardio-Thoracic Sciences Centre, the infant Sunday night went through exchange blood transfusion as his blood has been infected.

“The baby is relatively stable and we performed exchange transfusion Sunday night and replaced his infected blood with pure and sterilized blood. The baby is immuno-deficient and highly vulnerable to infection,” Bisoi said.

He said the infant, weighing two kgs, was given 160-200 ml of A positive blood.

The doctor said they would take a decision about performing surgery on the baby Tuesday.

Bisoi said the infant is suffering from the “rarest of the rare heart defect” known as Thoracic Ectopia Cordis, a birth defect that occurs in five to nine cases in one million births and the mortality rate is very high.

“There are only three survivors suffering from the disease in the world. But this baby is the only one with two heart defects,” he said.

“It’s a miracle and challenge for doctors. Every extra day he survives gives us an opportunity to deal with the rare disease and we are learning a lot from the case. We are doing our best to ensure the child lives,” Bisoi said.

Bisoi said they are also planning to do genetic mapping on the couple to check whether their other children would be born with the same defect.