CHENNAI: A mother of three from Nellore, who went into a state of severe congestive heart failure and whose survival prospects looked bleak because of the unavailability of a suitable donor heart, has been given a 30-day lease of life, thanks to a heart pump utilising magnetic levitation technology. While this has been heralded as the first for India, Dr K M Cherian, at whose Frontier Lifeline Hospital the woman was stabilised, said that this was the “most side-effect free heart pump” that he had seen yet.Utilising the Levitronix-LVAD (Left Ventricular Assist Device) for the first time on her mother was a huge decision for Karunya, the patient’s eldest daughter, a doctor herself. “Her condition was deteriorating and even stem cell therapy had failed. So we consented,” she said. Pumps have been used extensively to keep patients, whose hearts cannot sustain function till a heart transplant is possible, but with a time constraint. “Though a person has been recorded to have lived on a pump for 119 days once, the standard pump can be used only for up to 30 days,” explained Dr Alex Keys, who explained how the Levitronix-LVAD worked. “In older heart pumps, the impeller would be coupled with a bearing; this has been known to cause haemolysis, besides increasing risks of clotting and organ failure. Now, with the use of strong magnets, there is no heat-causing friction that can harm the blood,” he added.“Before the operation, I would just sit and write ‘Sri Rama Jayam’ and hope that I would be able to live,” voiced a feeble Mohana Thirupurasundari (46), inside the isolated ICU. Now, with two pipes connected to her heart valves running from an incision just below her left shoulder into a small machine, she looks much more relaxed. “I can’t hear my heart beating anymore, but they say that doesn’t matter,” she quipped, eight days after the LVAD was installed. “We have covered the tubes with foil so that she doesn’t get too upset looking at the blood exiting and entering her body,” reveals Dr Lavanya Sekhar, a senior Profusionist.Her organ systems are performing well and her urinary output is exemplary, she added. Though the ‘artificial heart’ outside her body can be replaced after 30 days, two things are foremost on her family’s mind: the hunt for a B+ve heart and the mounting costs that the device entails. “We have written to the transplant committee and she has been moved to the top of our priority list. Now all we can do is wait and hope,” says Dr Cherian.
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