Archana takes a new breath

Doctors at Yashoda Hospital performed AP’s first successful lung transplant surgery to give a 34-year-old woman a second shot at life.

When 34-year-old Pune resident Archana Shedge was diagnosed with interstitial fibrosis, the future looked bleak for her. The mother of two was told by doctors that the only way out for her was to have a lung transplant, a rather rare surgery in India. Only two such surgeries had been performed in the country so far – the first in Chennai and the second in Mumbai. Being a high risk surgery, few hospitals in the country are equipped with the infrastructure and skill to perform this rather long procedure. The surgery can cost between Rs.15 to Rs.20 lakh. However, time was running out for Archana, who had been having trouble breathing for the last two years. “She would keep coughing incessantly and things got to such a head that she could not perform even her basic chores like eat or go to the washroom. She needed external oxygen supply at all times. Doctors at Pune initially diagnosed it as a heart condition. When we approached experts at Bombay Hospital, they referred us to Dr AGK Gokhale at Yashoda Hospital, Secunderabad,” says Rohit Shedge, her husband. “Lung transplant surgery was the only option for Archana. But considering it is such a high risk surgery we consulted experts at the DeBakey Heart and Lung Centre in Texas, to check if there was another way out, but there wasn’t. So we explained the risks to the patient and her family and put her on the waiting list for a possible organ donor,” says Dr Gokhale, chief cardiothoracic, transplant and minimal access surgeon at Yashoda Hospital. Interstitial fibrosis affects nearly six to eight per cent of the Indian population, usually in the age group of 30 to 45. In this condition, a patient’s lung becomes stiff and oxygen supply to the lung is hindered. Fortunately, two months after Archana and her husband came to Hyderabad they got a donor. The family of a 55-year-old woman who had been declared brain dead at another City hospital, agreed to donate her organs and since the woman had O+ blood, she could be a universal donor. After harvesting her organ, doctors transplanted the right lung into Archana in a 14-hour long surgery. “Two days after the surgery Archana was able to walk in her room. But recovery will take nearly three to four months and she needs to be extremely cautious. She is highly susceptible to infections at the moment. On a positive note, for a woman who had just a few weeks to live, she now has an increased life expectancy,” says Dr Gokhale.