Combined Heart & Lung Transplant Surgery | Importance and Recovery Procedure

Combined heart and lung transplant surgery is one of the major and rare transplantation procedure where both deceased heart and lungs are transplanted with the healthy ones of a recently deceased donor. This transplantation surgery is performed as a last resort when all the other treatments procedures fail to improve to quality of life or prolong the healthy life of the patient.

In this blog here we are going to give you a basic idea about this advanced transplantation – reasons, importance, and recovery and also guide you towards the best heart & lung transplant surgeon in India for more information. So read on:

Heart-Lung Transplant Procedure – A Rare & Advanced Life Saving Transplantation:

Heart and lungs work as a team together to oxygenate the cells and tissues of the body. Malfunctioning of one organ can also impact the other and thus sometimes may also have to share the burden of disease. A damaged lung or heart can be individually replaced using transplantation and in rare cases when both the organs are severely damaged and all the other surgery options do not sufficiently improve the quality of life of the patient, a combined heart-lung transplantation surgery is carried out by an expert heart-lung surgeon.

Organ Availability & Evaluation:

Severe cases of pulmonary hypertension, congenital heart diseases are some of the most common cases which warrant heart-lung transplantation. That said, the heart-lung transplant procedure is a rare procedure mainly due to the shortage of suitable heart and lungs available.

Not every patient with damage to the heart or lungs become an automatic choice of this transplantation procedure. A patient for whom the heart-lung transplant can improve the health condition is first thoroughly evaluated to ensure the suitability of the patient. Initial screening followed by testing (blood tests, lung tests, urine tests, heart tests & bone tests etc.) and a meet with cardiologist and psychologist (if necessary) is carried out to ensure the patient is suitable for heart & lung transplantation surgery.

Risks & Recovery for Heart-lung Transplantation:

While organ transplantation is itself an advanced procedure, double transplantation of lung and heart is the pinnacle of surgical advancement, and naturally, the procedure is as complicated as it is advanced.

The whole process of donation sometimes can render the organ unusable and given the lung tissue deteriorates rapidly in presence of environment, the organ must be transported within 6 hours to ensure successful transplantation. From procuring the organ that matches the blood group a size requirements to transporting them to the medical facility in a healthy every step of the procedure requires meticulous planning and experience. There are only a handful of heart-lung transplant surgeons in India with expertise and experience in performing a successful combined lung-heart surgery and Dr Alla Gopala Krishna Gokhale is one of them.

Heart-lung transplantation is a life-saving surgical procedure that can breathe a new lease of life into the terminally ill.  Having successfully performed one of the earliest combined heart and lung transplant surgery in India, Dr Gokhale is the most successful heart and lung transplant surgeon in India. With 45 heart and lung transplants- 39 heart transplants and 15,000 plus open-heart surgeries – adult & paediatric, he has helped thousands of patients get another chance at living a healthy life and he can help you too. For more information on heart and lung transplant surgeries, you can contact him here: https://www.drgokhale.com