Boy undergoes a rare bypass surgery on his beating heart

A bypass surgery being performed on a patient is nothing unusual, except that when the patient happens to be a 15-month-old boy. Rohan, who was born with a rare congenital defect, got a new lease of life on April 22 when doctors at Wockhardt Hospital performed a rare bypass surgery on his beating heart.

Born to non-resident Indian parents residing in US, Rohan suffered a heart attack due to a rare cardiac anomaly after which his left coronary artery got severely narrowed. As a result, the baby suffered breathlessness and started vomiting. Doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where he was taken for a regular check up two months after his birth, displayed their helplessness to perform a surgery on him as he was too young.

“The child became more symptomatic in last 2 months when the family came to Wockhardt Paediatric & Congenital Heart Centre. Further advanced tests that included a coronary angiography and PET scan showed complete occlusion of left coronary artery. We then decided to perform the surgery,” said Dr Suresh Joshi, consulting paediatric cardiac surgeon at Wockhart hospital, who along with his team of doctors performed this rare surgery.

A bypass surgery on a beating heart is usually performed on an adult heart, but for the first time in the city a surgery like this was performed on a 15-month-old child whose arteries measured 1-1.2 mm.

“His condition was similar to condition of any adult who needed to undergo a bypass surgery — his case had a 100 per cent artery blockage. Unlike common congenital heart diseases, his arteries had gradually blocked the passage of blood to the heart. The pumping capacity of the heart had reduced to 20 per cent over the period of a few months and the child had suffered severe heart damage,” explained Dr Joshi.

Although Rohan will take some time to recover, his parents are bit relieved now. “He is out of the intensive care unit and will be discharged in a couple of days. We are now confidant that he will grow up like any other child of his age,” said his father.

Key aspects of surgery
* This is a rare heart vessel defect
* It is rare to perform Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery on a child
* It is even more rare to perform a Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery on a beating heart of a child as young as 15 months