Mr Reddeppa Reddy was a farmer from B. Kothakota in drought-hit western Chittoor. He met with a road accident on Monday and was rushed to the Madanapalle Area Hospital. He was shifted in a critical condition to SVIMS super-specialty hospital for better treatment the next day.
SVIMS Superintendent V. Satyanarayana decided to give the family the option of donating his organs. In the meantime, he directed his team of doctors to resuscitate the patient and keep him alive and informed the coordinator of the State’s organ donation programme, Jeevandaan.
It was the first heart extraction performed at SVIMS. And it was all made possible by a grieving widow-to-be, Malathi.
Subsequently, the heart was harvested from accident victim Reddeppa Reddy and rushed by road from SVIMS super-specialty hospital in Tirupati to the Madras Medical Mission (MMM) in Chennai where it was transplanted in the body of a recipient. In a similar operation, his kidneys were harvested too: one was despatched to the Narayana Medical College Hospital in Nellore where it gave life to a renal-failure patient; the other was given to Mr Chinnappa, a chronic patient who was on dialysis at SVIMS.
In turn, heart surgeons at MMM and renal specialists at the Narayana Medical Hospital College in Nellore were told to be ready in case the family’s acceptance was secured. The latter team decided to take a chance and drove down the 133 km to Tirupati rightaway.
Mr Reddeppa Reddy was the only son of his deceased parents. His young wife Malathi too was the only daughter of her parents. That left a lot of the decision-making to the in-laws, to whom the idea of organ donation was proposed.
Despite her anguish, the idea appealed to the young woman. She agreed, but with one reservation: that her husband’s eyes be spared.
“It was a perfectly understandable sentiment,” said SVIMS transplant coordinator N.V.S. Prasad.
Then began the nerve-wracking effort to get the heart harvest team down to Tirupati and convey them back to their home hospital to get the transplants done within the time available. It was already late afternoon on Wednesday when the MMM team was told about the harvest window. Initially, as time ticked away, the option of taking a flight to Tirupati was considered but it was calculated that it would take less time to cover the 133 km to the temple city – if the way was cleared both ways. The Tirupati Urban superintendent of police Gopinadh Jatti was contacted and he alerted his staff to be ready when the harvest vehicle got going.
The MMM team covered the 133 km to Tirupati in less than an hour. It took 25 specialists – urologists and nephrologists and cardiac surgeons – to harvest the heart and the two kidneys. The heart team left Tirupati at 8.30 pm with an advance convoy of the police piloting them to the interstate border where the Tamil Nadu police took over the relay. The harvest team reached Chennai well ahead of deadline and the transplant was performed comfortably that night. The patient, a man from Punjab, is learnt to be healthy.
The Narayana team too sped away with one of Mr Reddy’s kidneys while the other was transplanted to a SVIMS patient.
“The harvest team planned to extract Mr Reddy’s liver and lungs too but as the donor’s condition had already deteriorated, it was thought wiser not to,” said Dr. Satyanarayana of SVIMS told The Hindu.
The SVIMS management deputed its transplant coordinator Mr. Prasad to Mr Reddy’s village along to attend the funeral and personally thank his friends and relatives.