On August 24th, 2021, a 30-member team from led by Dr. K.R. Balakrishnan, Chairman-Cardiac Sciences and Director-Institute of the Heart and Lung Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support successfully performed a complex bilateral lung transplant on a one-year-old boy at MGM Healthcare, Chennai. The child becomes one of the world’s youngest and India’s youngest recipients to undergo bilateral lung transplantation.
The child was diagnosed with bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a form of chronic lung disease that affects new-borns and was placed on a ventilator from birth due to his abnormally low oxygen saturation. The doctors encountered a lot of difficulty transplanting the lungs because the donor and recipient lungs were different sizes. The child was fortunate to get a pair of lungs from a brain-dead paediatric patient.
