Heart transplant patient recovers
A terminally-critical patient, who received a heart transplant at Apollo Hospitals on February 2, was discharged on Monday, 13 days after the Hyderabad City Police and the Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited joined hands with the hospital in a bid to rush a brain-dead donor’s heart across the city — from Nagole to Jubilee Hills — in record time.
Addressing to mark the discharge of the 44-year-old Singareddy Karnakarreddy who was the recipient of the heart, Dr A. Gopala Krishna Gokhale, the heart and lung transplant specialist at Apollo Hospital, said that normally, there is a window of up to four hours for a heart transplant but in Karnakarreddy’s instance, because of how critical he was, they had less than two hours to ensure success of the transplant operation. Dr
Gokhale said it was a spontaneous thought to ask Metro Rail if it could help out as transporting the heart by road, even if a green channel could be created, would have cut into precious time and taken an hour or so.
This was the first time ever that a Metro train was used anywhere in the world to transport a human organ, said Dr K. Hari Prasad, president, Apollo Group of Hospitals. He thanked the family of the organ donor, Narsi Reddy, a farmer from Aregudem village in Nalgonda district, the city police and Metro Rail authorities for making it possible to save the life of a critically-ill patient.
The press conference was also addressed by N.V.S. Reddy, the HMRL managing director, Anil Kumar, the Additional Commissioner of police (Traffic), and Anil Kumar Saini, chief operating officer of L&T Metro Rail, who said the Metro would continue to provide such assistance in the future too.