The CARE Hospitals Group is a multispecialty healthcare provider, with 14 hospitals serving 6 cities across 5 states of India. The regional leader in tertiary care in South/Central India and among the top 5 pan-Indian hospital chains, CARE Hospitals delivers comprehensive care in more than 30 specialties in tertiary care settings.
CARE Heart Transplant doctors and surgeons use proven innovations to successfully treat people with congestive heart failure and other serious heart diseases. Their experience in using advanced technology, specialized procedures and an integrated approach focused on the patient. Dr. K R Balakrishnan Experts in heart and lung surgery (cardiac and thoracic surgeons) perform more than 306 Heart Transplants over the past 9 years, 102 Heart Transplants performed last year (3rd Highest in the world) including 29 paediatric Heart Transplants. 54 LVAD and more than 30 lung Transplants performed year.
In order to get a heart transplant, you must first be placed on a transplant list. But, before you can be placed on the transplant list, you must go through a careful screening process. A team of heart doctors, nurses, social workers, and bioethicists review your medical history, diagnostic test results, social history, and psychological test results to see if you are able to survive the procedure and then comply with the continuous care needed to live a healthy life.
Donors for heart transplants are individuals who may have recently died or become brain dead, which means that although their body is being kept alive by machines, the brain has no sign of life. Many times, these donors died as a result of a car accident, severe head injury, or a gunshot wound.
Once a donor heart becomes available, a surgeon from the transplant center goes to harvest the donor heart. The heart is cooled and stored in a special solution while being taken to the recipient. The surgeon will make sure the donor heart is in good condition before beginning the transplant surgery. The transplant surgery will take place as soon as possible after the donor heart becomes available.
The most common causes of death following a heart transplant are infection and rejection. Patients on drugs to prevent rejection of the new heart are at risk for developing kidney damage, high blood pressure, osteoporosis (a severe thinning of the bones, which can cause fractures), and lymphoma (a type of cancer that affects cells of the immune system).