Thaindian News

Mohali (Punjab), Sep 21 (IANS) A six-hour heart surgery on a 12-day-old baby boy has saved his life, doctors at a private hospital here said Wednesday.

A team of surgeons led by Fortis Hospital executive director and cardio thoracic and vascular surgery specialist T.S. Mahant said that the life of the 12-day-old infant was saved through a “rare, complicated and challenging heart surgery”.

“The baby was born in a private hospital in Mohali and was put on ventilator right from the day of birth. He was diagnosed as having pneumonia. As his condition kept on deteriorating, he was brought to Fortis ventilator,” Mahant told reporters here.

“After thorough investigations, he was diagnosed as suffering from a rare congenital defect called TAPVC (total anomalous pulmonary venous connection) and also infra-diaphragmatic obstruction which made the case even more complicated,” he said.

Mahant said: “Generally, very few cardiac cases are neo-natal emergencies, that is, the child may die if not medically or surgically intervened. This case was such a classic example. The baby required mechanical ventilation within few hours of birth itself, and, without surgery he could not have survived longer.”

He said that infra-diaphragmatic TAPVC is extremely rare and has an incidence of 1 in 100,000 births.

“Without surgery it is universally fatal. Even surgery of such condition has high fatality rate of 35 percent versus 5 percent in other cardiac surgeries. Looking at this, we decided to operate on the little child immediately, even though he was just 12 days old,” Mahant said.

“You can well imagine the size of the heart of a 12-day infant. We had to be absolutely careful in the surgical operation and the entire team worked with absolute precision,” he said.

The baby was finally taken off the ventilator and subsequently discharged from the hospital last week.

Simranjeet, the mother of the infant, was overwhelmed by the efforts made by the Fortis team in saving the life of her child.

“Before coming to Fortis, we had actually given up hope, but Dr. Mahant and the Fortis team instilled a new confidence in us. They told us that the surgery was risky but they will try their best and they really looked upon our son as their own child,” she said.