“It is important to develop transportation routes that can help in quickly transferring hearts to the receivers. Heart transplantations have to be completed within four hours. By developing good routes, more heart transplantations can be done. People also should be made more aware of the benefits of organ donations so that someone else can get a new lease on life” said Dr. Kunal Sarkar.

The largest private hospital network in Eastern India, the Medica Group of Hospitals, performed Tripura‘s first successful heart transplant and successfully treated Mr. Ranjit Roy, a 44-year-old shopkeeper from Barjala, Sepahijala, Tripura, at its flagship facility, the Medica Superspecialty Hospital in Kolkata, as a first step toward providing top-notch clinical care for neighboring states.

A press conference was organized to announce this feat of the cardiac team of Medica Group of Hospitals.

Ranjit Roy had dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart’s chambers (ventricles) thin out and expand, making it difficult for the heart to pump blood effectively. He was in the last stages of his illness and had a very low chance of surviving. For this miraculous case, a group of skilled medical professionals from the cardiac surgery department at Medica Superspecialty Hospital in Kolkata under the direction of Dr. Kunal Sarkar, Senior Vice Chairman & Senior Consultant, Dr. Soumyajit Ghosh, Consultant Cardiac Surgeon, Dr. Dipanjan Chatterjee, ECMO Physician, and Critical Care Specialist, collaborated with the Medica care team. With this transplant, a Tripura resident made history as the first individual from that state to get a heart from Kolkata.

Mr. Hiranmoy Ghoshal, a 51-year-old theatre personality, who was transferred from Burdwan to Medica Superspecialty Hospital on 28^th December, was declared brain dead on 30^th December.

Mr. Ranjit Roy was instructed to leave Tripura right away on December 30. Both the donor and the receiver were present at the hospital and had surgery at the same time. At the Medica hospital, a miraculous heart transplant was carried out, opening the way for neighboring states to get cutting-edge medical treatment. The family of the late Mr. Hiranmoy Ghoshal owes a debt of gratitude to the entire Medica community and the family of Mr. Ranjit Roy for this kind act.

Priyanka Dutta