BENGALURU: A city anaesthetist working in Covid ward who suffered extensive damage to lungs in the second wave has received a new lease of life after a three-month hospital stay filled with uncertainties and a successful double-lung transplant.
Dr
Sanath Kumar, 30, who works with a private hospital, tested positive for Covid on May 7 and was shifted to ICU after his condition started gradually worsening. Dr
Sanath Kumar
was admitted to
Aster CMI Hospital
on May 28 and was put on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (
ECMO
), a life-support machine, before he underwent a double-lung transplant on June 22. He was discharged on September 7.
Sanath’s wife
Manjula MJ
, also a doctor, said he had not taken Covid jab as he had sinusitis and suffered from allergies. Sanath is currently on oxygen support and undergoing physiotherapy sessions. “When I tested positive and started taking medicines, I thought I’d recover soon. I never imagined I’d end up with a double-lung transplant,” he added.
This is said to be the first post-Covid double-lung transplant in
Karnataka. Doctors conducted the procedure along with Dr Sandeep
Attawar
, chair and director, thoracic organ transplants and assist devices at KIMS heart and lung transplant institute. He came from Hyderabad for the procedure.
“Sanath was under observation for 3-4 weeks for any signs of improvement in his lungs. Since his lungs were severely damaged, he needed a double-lung transplant for survival,” Dr V Arun, lead consultant (anaesthesia and critical care), Aster CMI Hospital, said. Within four weeks of registering with
Jeevasarthakate
(the organ transplant and tissues organisation in Karnataka), the lungs of a braindead cadaver donor were found to match with those of Sanath.
Attawar said the surgery was “gruelling” since Sanath suffered from a life-threatening combination of lung damage caused by SARS-CoV2, an exaggerated immune response to it, and the body’s failure to properly repair the injury.
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