Heart harvested from patient at Delhi hospital sent to AIIMS via 10-km green corridor

New Delhi, Mar 1 (PTI) The heart of a 32-year-old man who died in a road accident was donated to a patient after the organ was ferried through a 10-kilometre ‘green corridor’ set up between a private hospital here and the AIIMS on Wednesday, hospital authorities said.

The victim was brought in an “extremely critical condition” at Fortis Hospital, Vasant Kunj, following a road accident on the morning of February 25. His CT examination revealed “severe brain damage”, doctors said.

Despite the best efforts of a team of doctors, the patient could not be saved. After he was declared brain dead, his family consented to donating his organs, a Fortis Hospital spokesperson said.

The organs were retrieved on Wednesday and sent to three different hospitals. One of his kidneys was used for a patient at the hospital, she said.

The heart was donated to a patient at AIIMS, the liver to one at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital here and a kidney to a patient at Max Hospital in Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh, Fortis Hospital said in a statement.

A green corridor was set up from Fortis Hospital to transport the harvested heart to AIIMS, covering the 10-kilometre distance in just 11 minutes, it said.

“A transplant surgery for the patient who has received the donated heart is still underway at AIIMS,” the spokesperson said.

A 61-old-old Delhi woman suffering from renal failure was the recipient of a kidney. The transplant is over, she said.

Dr Gauri Shankar Sharma, director and head of critical care medicine at Fortis Hospital, said, “The clockwork precision of all internal and external teams, including Delhi Traffic Police, made this donation a reality. This should encourage more people to come forward and get themselves registered for organ donation to save more lives.”

According to data available with the National Organ & Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO), 11 cadaver donations were done with successful retrieval of 30 organs in Delhi in 2022, the statement said.

Every year, hundreds of people die waiting for an organ transplant in India. Due to misconceptions and the lack of awareness, there is a shortage of organ donors, doctors said.

The gap between the number of organs donated and the people waiting for a transplant is growing wider with each passing year. Timely cadaveric organ donation can save many lives and more people would come forward and pledge their organs if they receive more information and are educated on the benefits of organ donation, they said.

In another development, doctors at Max Super Speciality Hospital in Saket removed “bilateral adrenal tumours” the size of a “large watermelon” on the right side and a “football-size tumour” on the left side from the abdomen of a 51-year-old man, doctors said.

They have claimed that the case made for “the world’s largest adrenal tumours removed so far”.

The tumours were so huge that they made the patient’s abdomen protrude outwards and had displaced internal organs around them, the doctors at the hospital here said.

The tumours, measuring 20 x 20 cm (right side) and 12 x 10 cm (left side), and weighing 4.5 kg and 1 kg, respectively, were located deep in the upper part of the abdomen at the top of the kidney where the adrenal is situated. Adrenal glands normally measure about 2 cm in an adult, the hospital said in a statement.

The patient, Bivash Chandra Tivari from Bihar, was presented to the hospital with complaints of loss of appetite, constipation for 2-2.5 months and abdominal distention. He had consulted doctors at hospitals in Patna where the tumours were detected.