Kolkata witnesses its first heart transplant

Kolkata on Monday witnessed its first heart transplant operation as a patient admitted to a private hospital received the organ flown in from Bengaluru in the morning.

The flight from the Karnataka capital took three hours and Kolkata and Bidhan Nagar police created a green corridor between the city airport and the hospital in Salt Lake to cut down the transportation time.

The heart kept in a special case was taken to the hospital 18 kilometres away in barely 22 minutes, a journey which usually takes 45 to 55 minutes depending on the traffic.

Hospital authorities said the procedure, which started around noon, was complicated and would need around three hours. The operation was conducted by Dr Tapas Roychowdhury and Dr KM Mandana.

A spokesperson for the hospital said Dilchand Singh, the recipient, was suffering from a severe heart problem for many years and needed a transplant to survive. The hospital registered its request for a heart from a donor two years ago.

The request was granted on Sunday night after an accident victim was declared brain dead at a hospital in Bengaluru. The patient’s heart was removed on Monday and taken to the airport.

This is not the first time organ transplant operations have taken place in Kolkata. Both private and government hospitals have conducted such procedures but never for a heart patient. A green corridor was created in the heart of Kolkata in November 2016 between SSKM Hospital in south Kolkata and a private hospital on EM Bypass in Salt Lake in the middle of the night for a patient, who needed a kidney transplant.

Green corridors are traffic light free routes demarcated and cleared to transport harvested organs to ensure that it arrives at its destination in the shortest time possible.

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