11-month-old Nigerian baby undergoes rare heart surgery

An 11-month-old baby boy from Nigeria recently underwent a rare heart surgery at a Gurgaon hospital.

An 11-month-old baby boy from Nigeria recently underwent a rare heart surgery at a Gurgaon hospital.

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According to the doctors at Medanta — The Medicity, baby Mathew Miller suffered from a complex congenital heart defect. Apart from a hole in the center of the heart, the baby was also suffering from truncus arteriosus - a rare congenital disorder in which a single artery arises from two ventricles and gives rise to both the aortic and pulmonary vessels. The valve at the origin of this hugely dilated vessel was severely narrow too.

However, the multi-disciplinary team of four doctors headed by Dr Anil Bhan, a cardiovascular surgeon at Medanta hospital, was faced by the real challenge on the baby’s arrival at the hospital. “We had studied the case files that had been sent through emails. But we didn’t expect a host of other complexities. We were shocked to see the child who was severely underweight (6.7 kg) compared to a normal one-year-old who would weigh around 10kg,” said Dr Munesh Tomar, senior consultant paediatric cardiology at Medanta and part of the multi-disciplinary team of doctors.

The baby had to be operated for two highly complex conditions at the same time — truncus arteriosus and the hole in the heart. For this, the doctors had to replace the aorta, which is the largest artery of the heart.