9-year-old gets new lease of life with latest heart surgery

9-year-old gets new lease of life with latest heart surgery

Pune: A 9-year-old girl underwent heart surgery by ‘posterior thoracotomy’ at Sahyadri Hospitals in Pune, a surgery in which the incision is made on the back so that the patient doesn’t get a scar on the chest. 

Heart surgeries usually involve making an incision in the front, on the chest. This results in big and unsightly scars which are highly visible through the upper part of the chest and below the neck which patients take daily efforts to hide. Speaking to Sakal Times, the father of the nine-year-old girl, on condition of anonymity, said the health of the girl deteriorated very badly.
“She used to get severe breathlessness. And her pulse increased exponentially. She is just in Class IV and this scared us all a lot. Finally, when we visited the doctor they informed us that a surgery is mandatory,” he said.

Dr Mahendra Bafna, a cardio thoracic surgeon at Sahyadri Hospital and his team conducted an innovative procedure named ‘posterior thoracotomy’ where the incision for the surgery is made on the back. 

“The parents of the child had informed the doctors that she did not gain much weight. Post surgery, the child was kept in the hospital for three days with minimal pain. She is now showing none of the symptoms and has started gaining weight. The benefit of the procedure is that scars are not visible to the patient throughout their life,” said Dr Bafna.

He said the patient showed typical symptoms of heart defects which were palpitations, insufficient weight gain and breathlessness. “This procedure will help children get healthy faster. Most importantly children will forget about heart surgery soon with no psychological and social scar when they grow up. So far, the team has conducted this procedure on 15 children with 100 per cent success rate,” said Dr Bafna.

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