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I don't feel like God: Dr Reddy
Shalini Narang speaks to the doctor who performed a successful heart surgery on a week-old baby.
Dr V Mohan Reddy, the paediatric surgeon who performed open-heart arterial switch surgery on a one-week-old baby with a heart the size of a grape said in an exclusive interview with HindustanTimes.com that it was "a wonderful feeling to be able to share the gift that God has given me to save the lives of children".
"No, I do not feel like God. There are a lot of people in other professions with other specialised skills who protect or save human lives, not just doctors," said Dr Reddy.
"As a doctor, compassion and commitment to patient care is my highest priority."
Dr Reddy is the chief of paediatric cardiac surgery and a professor at Stanford University's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. He specialises in performing surgery on infants.
"I choose paediatric cardiac surgery as my area of specialisation since it is true thrill to see children bounce back to life after a surgical procedure."
Jerrick De Leon, born more than 13 weeks early, is the smallest baby ever to survive an open-heart procedure called an arterial switch. At the time of his operation, on February 6, Jerrick weighed just over 1.5 pounds (700 grams).
Arterial switch surgery involves switching two arteries that route blood out of the heart: The aorta and the pulmonary artery.
In 2001, he had performed the surgery called Total Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Return on the smallest baby of the world. "Now the baby is a healthy 3-year-old," told Dr Reddy.
The next milestone in paediatric cardiac surgery is in-vitro surgery or surgery on the heart of the foetus in the womb.
"If surgery can be performed on the foetus' heart, there is a better chance for the heart to develop. We are ready to perform such a surgery at Stanford University's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, if we get the right patients," said Dr Reddy.
Remembering Dr Venugopal, as his teacher and mentor at AIIMS, from where Dr Reddy has done his masters, Reddy said that it was Dr Venugopal who encouraged him to pursue paediatric cardiac surgery and had helped him getting internship at the Children's Hospital in Boston in 1991.
Dr Reddy did his bachelors in medicine from Kakatiya Medical College in Warangal before joining the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in India.
He was a senior resident at The Children's Hospital in Boston for two years.
