Police created a 23-kilometre-long green corridor and successfully transported a live heart from the Sagar Hospital at Banneraghatta Road to Narayana Hrudayalaya at Hosuru Road in Bengaluru in less than 20 minutes.
During the entire journey, the ambulance had a team of eight technicians and doctors, apart from the driver.
The donor of the heart is Chetan R, a man who was pronounced brain dead last week after he met with an accident at his workplace.
Chetan hailed from Adalwadi village in Mandya district, near Mysore, and was working at a garment factory on the outskirts of Bengaluru.
On July 15, he met with an accident at the factory, injuring his spinal cord. Within two days he was declared brain dead due to blood clotting, though his other organs were working fine.
Chetan’s father, Ramanna M, remembered seeing news of a heart transplant that took place in southern Chennai city in 2014 and was inspired to do the same.
Zonal Coordination Committee of Karnataka for Transplantation contacted the relatives of Chetan and succeeded in convincing them.
On Thursday, Chetan’s organs, including his kidney, eyes and heart were donated.
The most vital organ, heart, was given to a 63-year-old lawyer from Patna, Arvind Sinha, who is under treatment at Narayana Hrudayalaya.
Dr. Bhagirath Raghurajan, a surgeon at the hospital where the heart was taken, said that the green corridor shortens transit time, thus helping accomplish transplant in minimum time.
“The green corridor helps to shorten the transit time. If you are able to achieve it by air, well and good, but in certain circumstances you have to use road transport. In such cases, if you have traffic with free flow and you are able to reach the recipient hospital in time, you are able to accomplish the transplant in minimum time,” said Raghurajan.
“The sooner you are able to accomplish it, you will be able to nourish the heart and get it back to its original function. If the delay is too much then the heart function will start deteriorating and if the duration is too long then this heart is useless because its function will be worse than what the recipient already has. The outside duration of heart transplant is four hours and the sooner the better,” he added.
A similar attempt of heart transplant via green corridor was made last year when a heart was transported from Bangalore to Chennai, the first-ever inter-state transit in India.
The live heart was flown over 350 kilometres in just over two hours during that transit.Â