The three-month-old who was diagnosed with a rare congenital heart disease will celebrate her first Eid at home after undergoing a successful cardiac surgery, lasting almost seven hours, a city hospital in New Delhi has claimed. 



The child from Lucknow was diagnosed with Supracardiac TAPVD (Total anomalous pulmonary venous drainage), a type of congenital heart disease, in which pulmonary veins drain into a common chamber behind the heart.  Due to this condition, blood coming from lungs does not reach the heart.

The baby was born to a non-consanguineous couple and was delivered prematurely by caesarean surgery. She had bluish colouration of skin and used to breathe rapidly since one month of age, said Muthu Jothi, Paediatric Cardio-Thoracic Surgeon at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals.

Her parents consulted doctors in their hometown where the infant was diagnosed with Supracardiac TAPVD and was referred to Delhi for treatment, the surgeon said. According to Jothi, Zubiya's condition presented an exclusive congenital circumstance in which the baby was suffering from a unique type of cardiac malformation.

"Due to this, the blood coming from lungs does not reach the heart. The vein ascending from this common chamber joins the right side of the heart because of which all the blood which needs to go to the left side of the heart is drained to the right side of the heart. 

"This leads to mixing of deoxygenated blood with oxygenated blood. The only way that the child can survive is if there is a small hole between the top two chambers of the heart," Jothi explained.

It will allow the mixed blood to go to the left side of the heart and then be pumped into the body. Because impure blood is being pumped into the body, babies with such condition tend to be very blue and have very high lung pressures, he explained. Dinesh Thakur, consultant, paediatric surgery at the hospital, said upon doing an ECHO, it was found that the pulmonary veins of the child were actually draining at different places.

"This is a highly risky situation and technically it becomes very difficult because all of the pulmonary veins draining at different places, and all of them have to be brought together and make them drain the blood into the left side of the heart," he said. Terming it a case of high-risk procedure, Jothi explained the surgical procedure.

"The right upper and lower pulmonary veins were surgically connected to the left side of the heart through the common chamber with a large patch inside the heart. The left upper vein which was draining separately was disconnected from the vertical vein draining to the right side of the heart and we had re-attached to the left atrial appendage," he said. 

It was a very complex surgery which took around seven hours. It is important to understand that these pulmonary veins are very small and if they are not plugged in properly, the flow in these blood vessels is compromised and lung pressures do not come down. The girl was on ventilator for around four days and then discharged after a week of the surgery on April 8. Expressing her gratitude, the child's mother said, "There is no greater joy than seeing your child healthy. It is like Eid has come early this year! We are immensely thankful to the doctors. They never gave up and never let us lose hope."