My journey as a Heart Transplant Surgeon

Two incidents often cross my mind whenever I’m asked about transplant surgery, Heart Transplantation, to be specific.

 

The first one involves a relative of mine who is a thoracic surgeon, Dr. Sabyasachi Bal, now at Sri Gangaram Hospital, and adept at video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS). He informed me one day that he was starting a new innings by enrolling as a student in robotic thoracic surgery.

 

The second incident was a discussion with Dr. Plaban Mukherjee (Professor & HOD, Cardiothoracic & Vascular Surgery, Medical College, Kolkata). He conveyed his deep interest in cardiac transplant surgery, which he had already involved himself in during his pre-retirement phase. Before this, one of my professors called me up rather late one night and enquired about the feasibility of performing transplant surgery in our set-up at S.S.K.M Hospitals and IPGME&R. Till then I was content doing the usual cardiac surgery cases and was able to do about 4 open heart cases every day.

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Soon after, I applied for a heart-lung transplantation license and started to get things in motion. I was extremely grateful to my colleagues for the help and rallying around me in this endeavor once the license was available. We were able to do 5 heart transplants without a single in-hospital mortality. This included a re-do case of valve replacement where special transfusion problems had to be tackled.

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Transplantation of the heart is a special problem and there were problems inherent to the eastern sector of the country. We were happy that we succeeded in the Government sector overcoming all insurmountable obstacles.