An Infant from Pakistan has got a new lease of life after undergoing an operation at a city hospital in Delhi. The baby was diagnosed with a rare condition of a giant heart. According to doctors, this is the first documented case of the largest left atrium reported at this age.
The 14-month-old baby with complex and unusual heart disease’, was operated in 2016 at Sri Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) in Delhi. But now, the case study has been accepted for publication in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, a reputed medical journal. The boy was diagnosed after his parents noticed he was breathless and unable to sleep. He had difficulties in feeding and crawling, said the hospital authorities. He weighed just 6.5 kg, which according to doctors, is half the normal weight expected at that age. The family was told to seek treatment outside Pakistan due to the complexities.
“When the infant came to us, we were surprised to see his weight. We found that the left side receiving chamber of the heart (the left atrium) was hugely dilated to four times the expected size, and was pressing on the airway organs in the chest,” said Dr Neeraj Aggarwal, the paediatric cardiologist at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. “Also there was a large hole between the lower chambers of the heart (called ventricular septal defect) and the mitral valve was leaking,” he added.
The normal value of left atrium is 12-20ml in children. But according to the hospital authorities, in the case of this boy, the volume of the left atrium (LA) was 87ml.
Dr Raja Joshi, chairman, paediatric cardiac surgery at the hospital said, “It took nearly six hours to operate on the child. We had to repair the mitral valve because valve replacement wasn’t feasible. That would require the child to be on blood thinners for life, which has its own risks.”
According to the doctors, any child above three months can be operated on in a single-stage surgery.  The surgery was complex and challenging since only a few cases of giant LA have been reported in children aged below two years.
“We see a lot of parents saying no to surgeries. One needs to understand that long-term survival is important and the successful results of complex heart diseases are possible in small children, even in India. Parents of such children should be encouraged to come forward and opt for the treatment rather than leaving the child to suffer,” said Dr Aggarwal.
The entire surgery was completed in 5.5 hours. The doctors said that the child is doing fine after two years post-surgery.

Source: Indian Express, Times of India

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