Man with two Hearts

COIMBATORE, June 2: Kerala man of 45-year-old became the first person in the country to live with two beating hearts, one of it being a woman's after he suffered a heart failure.

The man, underwent a rare heart transplant, instead of replacing his old heart with a new one, doctors just connected the new heart to the old one and said so the both hearts can share the load.

Kovai Medical Centre surgeons of Cardio-thoracic knew that the man would have to undergo a heart transplant after finding the heart functioning at only 10%.

A cardiothoracic surgeon at KMCH Dr. Prashanth Vaijyanath, who performed the surgery said 'As part of the workup, we found that his lung pressure and lung resistance were extremely high. In such a condition, the newly grafted heart usually fails because it will not be able to overcome the lung pressure.'

Dr. Vaijyanath said 'When a brain dead woman of the same age and his size came on Monday, we found that the heart sizes were matched and chose to try the third option, which is called a heterotopic transplant.'

It took Three-and-half hour for the surgeons first for opening the patient's chest cavity and creating a small space for the heart on his right side, because as we al know the normal heart always lies on the left side.

The doctor said 'We implanted the new heart, and had to synchronize the beats of the two hearts, which were different in character. It was done with the help of a pacemaker.' 'We connected the hearts at five places, two on the right side and three connections on the left side of the heart.'

The entire surgery was done without stopping the native heart, the doctor added.