KARACHI- Pakistani doctors on Monday performed first-ever mechanical heart transplant at Karachi’s National Institute of Cardio Vascular Diseases (NICVD.
62-year-old Nafeesa Begum was the first patient to undergo this surgery and receive a mechanical heart transplant.
Dr. Hameedullah Malik of NICVD said the woman’s heart was only 15 percent functional prior to the surgery but all her other organs were working fine.
He added that the patient is doing fine, and would be shifted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) soon.
The whole procedure was performed by Dr. Pervez Chaudhry, who joined the NICVD team on the request of Head of NICVD Dr. Nadeem Qamar, along with his team that consisted of eight experts.
Introducing mechanical heart transplant technology was an initiative taken by Qamar. “We had been working on structuring this department for about six months now,” Dr. Malik added.
The procedure costs over a crore and at the moment, it’s funded by donors and NICVD, Dr. Malik added.
Dr. Malik explained that the regular heart transplant is inserting a new heart in the body but in a mechanical heart transplant the organ is not replaced, in fact, the pumping mechanism is fixed by using a device. This device then pumps blood across the body.
