Man Left With Two Beating Hearts Post a ‘Piggybank Transplant’

The procedure made way for the donor’s heart to be placed between the right lung & the original heart of the patient

In a rare incident, a man was left with two beating hearts after he underwent a heart transplant surgery in Hyderabad in India, as per a report in The Hindu.

The patient, a 56-year-old man, was brought to the Apollo Hospital in Jubilee Hills to undergo a cardiac surgery. The plan was to attempt a heart replacement surgery. But the doctors realised that the donor heart was of ‘normal fist-size’ as compared to the ‘small football’ sized heart of the recipient. The donor’s heart was found to be too small for the recipient, as per the report.

Since the patient was in an unstable condition, the doctors decided to go ahead with a ‘Piggyback Heart Transplant’ which basically allows both the hearts - the donor’s and the recipient’s - to be placed alongside each other, without removing the latter.