A team of doctors from three different departments — Cardiology, Cardiovascular Surgery and Anaesthesia — diagnosed and operated upon the 26-day-old baby.

“We have operated on such cases in the past as well but this was the first time an open-heart surgery was performed on a 2.5-kg infant whose vital organs like lungs, heart and kidney were still developing,” said Dr Rana Sandip Singh, who performed the surgery. Dr G D Puri led the Anaesthesia team.

Manpreet Kaur, a resident of Chandigarh, gave birth to the girl on August 31. It was a normal delivery. But after few days, she noticed that the baby was having difficulty in breathing and was turning blue. On September 16, the baby was admitted in the Paediatric Emergency Department.

Dr Rohit Manoj Kumar, Paediatric Cardiologist, conducted an echocardiography which revealed that the child had pulmonary atresia. “It’s an uncommon heart ailment among children, with one in a thousand children suffering from it. Since the baby had very low weight, the diagnosis had to be extremely accurate before the surgery,” said Dr Kumar.

The child was immediately shifted to the neonatal intensive care unit and put on medication to increase blood flow to the lungs. A surgical team was consulted and the family was informed that the infant would require urgent surgery.

“The family was given the option of a closed-heart surgery (BT Shunt), which would require subsequent repairs, or an open-heart surgery, which would be complete in one go,” said Dr Rana.

During the surgery, the pulmonary artery was enlarged using pericardium (outer layer of the heart). The child was kept on a ventilator for the next five days.