Rare surgery sets right teen boy’s battered heart
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When doctors at MIOT hospitals saw the CT- scans of 14 year old Ratan's heart, they were taken aback.
It seemed as if the child’s heart had every conceivable complication -- there was a large hole in the heart tissue, for one.
The main aortic valve, that controls the pure blood flowing out of the heart, was leaking. The main blood vessel, the aorta, had ballooned into a huge 59 mm aneurysm.
(Normal diameter of a child’s aorta is around 22mm) It was in danger of bursting at any time, causing the boy to bleed to death.
“While this combination of three heart conditions has never been reported in the world before, they were still manageable .
What made Ratan’s case extremely complex was that his sternum or breastbone was sunken into his chest, pushing his battered heart to the left side, onto the space reserved for the lung,” explained Dr V.V. Bashi.
Ratan was born with Noonan’s syndrome, a genetic condition that causes such heart defects, bleeding problems and defects in the skeleton—the reason why his breast bone was sunken almost down to his vertebral column, leaving a deep cavity in the middle of his chest called ‘pectus excavatum’.
After three days of researching and planning an operation that has never been attempted before, the team at MIOT decided they could wait no more.
“The human heart is usually placed in the middle of the chest. As Ratan’s heart was completely pushed to the left, we had to make our incision on the side of his chest, and access the heart from inbetween the ribs,” said Dr Bashi “We had to replace the defective aortic valve with a mechanical valve.
The part of the aorta that had ballooned up was removed and replaced with a graft. Finally, the hole in the heart tissue was repaired with a patch,” said Dr Bashi.
While the boy would have to take blood-thinning medicines all his life to prevent blood clots, he can return to his active lifestyle and even play his favourite sport, cricket, the doctor added. The surgery will be published in international medical journals.
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