The pulmonary arteries are the blood vessels that carry deoxygenated blood from the heart to the small arteries in the lungs.
The Cardiac Surgical team headed by Dr KC Mukherjee, Senior Consultant and Coordinator was supported by Dr Anupam Srivastava, Dr Ankit Mathur, Dr Preet Kamal, Dr Maninder, Dr Ranjeet and Cardiologists Dr RP Singh, Dr JS Grewal and Dr Chetan Sharma and paediatrecian Dr TS Gambhir.
Jessica, a 5-year-old girl and a resident of Hansa, was underweight and practically showed no signs of growth.
She was diagnosed to have a hole in the heart (VSD) which was bigger than the aorta (main artery of the body).
Because of this hole, most of the blood was being diverted to the pulmonary artery(PA) and then to the lungs. This high flow of blood in the pulmonary artery since birth had raised the pressure in the PA as high as aorta (normally it is one-fourth of aorta).
Increase in PA pressures and low body weight of the patient made it a very high risk surgery.
A team at the SPS Apollo Hospital successfully operated this patient in two-and-half hours and the patient regained consciousness in 6 hours and started walking in 48 hours.
The patient was discharged on the sixth post-operative day in normal condition with a normal heart. Dr K C Mukherjee stated that such kinds of operations require excellent skill, good team, good infrastructure and multispeciality support.