A few days ago, two-year-old Cherish from Guntur, was wheeled into the Wockhardt Hospital on Bannerghatta Road breathless with an ailing heart.

Today, a team of doctors not just helped him walk back home healthy, but made him the brand ambassador for their National Paediatric Cardiac Programme.

The management said the new hospital will function as a national referralcum-knowledge exchange centre for paediatric cardiology and cardiac surgery.

"Paediatric cardiologists from across the group will exchange clinical knowledge and share case studies through monthly sessions. All disciplines of paediatric cardiology and paediatric cardiac surgery will be discussed on a weekly basis," said Vishal Bali, CEO,Wockhardt Hospitals.

The programme will also include sessions by doctors from Harvard associated hospitals in Boston on a continual basis. Dr N S Devananda, consultant cardiovascular surgeon, who performed the surgery on Cherish said it was a three-hour complex heart surgery.

The baby was diagnosed with congenital aneurysm (widening) of the left atrium.

"Only one in 54 persons in the world is diagnosed with this condition. It forces the heart to move to the right. There is a lot of pressure on the mitral valve, which regulates the flow of blood in the heart. The valve gave in and started leaking. If left untreated, it could have been fatal," he said the doctors surgically removed the aneurysm. "The heart was back to its normal size. Then we mended the damaged mitral valve," said Dr Devananda.

The case, doctors say, is one of the rarest and first at least in the hospital records. The hospital now has a team of paediatric cardiologists and paediatric cardiac surgeons to perform complex heart surgeries.

"It's essential to have such bifurcation. It would allow us to specialise in one stream of medicine," said Dr Vivek Jawali, head of cardiac surgeons.