Doctors at KIMS Hospitals perform highest number of successful COVID Double Lung Transplant procedures in Asia

• Doctors at KIMS Hospitals perform highest number of successful COVID Double Lung Transplant procedures in Asia in 8 months
• Doctors completes 50 bilateral Lung & Heart transplants between September 2020 & April 2021

Hyderabad, April 19th, 2021: Doctors at the Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS), Hyderabad, one of the leading healthcare providers in the country, performed 12 COVID Double Lung transplants & overall 50 Lung & Heart transplant procedures between September 2020 and April 2021. This is by far the highest number of procedures performed at a single healthcare institute in Asia in the past eight months as far as COVID Double Lung Transplants are concerned.

The Heart &Lung Transplant Institute received critical patients from across the country, and some among these required advanced respiratory support _ ECMO _ for respiratory failure caused due to Covid-19 virus. These patients were brought in from States likes Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Delhi in the North; Kerala, Karnataka in the South; Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan in the West; and West Bengal, Odisha in East; along with Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh in Central India.

Commenting on the record performance, Dr. Sandeep Attawar, Program Director and Chair, Thoracic Organ Transplant program, KIMS Hospitals said, “The team has performed 12 double lung transplants for patients with respiratory failures caused due to Covid-19 and 38 heart, double lung & combined heart double lung transplants for patients suffering from advanced cardio respiratory failure since September 2020. While in the past, the focus was on chronic respiratory ailments, in the past eight months, the focus had to be shifted to management of advanced respiratory failure caused due to Covid-19 pandemic.”

“With 50 thoracic transplant procedures involving both lungs and heart, KIMS once again established its authority as one of the best healthcare institutions, not just in the country, but across Asia. This achievement speaks volumes about the technical superiority and knowledge excellence available at KIMS hospitals. We are confident, this is just the beginning and KIMS will achieve many more firsts for the country in the times ahead,” added Dr. B Bhaskar Rao, Managing Director, KIMS Hospitals.

The team at the KIMS Heart & Lung Transplant Institute believes that the course of Covid-19 infection in an individual is unpredictable; but patients who have lung involvement and develop respiratory failure early in the course of illness tend to have more severe disease. Advanced respiratory support like ECMO should be considered early in the management of these patients and should not be tried as salvage therapy. Patients who fail to show signs of improvement on ECMO even after 2-4 weeks should be considered for lung transplant.

The team at KIMS has done 12 transplants for Covid-19 patients which is one of the largest series in Asia. Each case was challenging and posed a unique set of challenges. In one case, a young man was bridged with ECMO support for 56 days and subsequently performed successful double lung transplant, a huge achievement for the team at KIMS.This ECMO bridge case is the longest ECMO bridge to a successful transplant in India. Similarly, there are other cases in which patients were revived from an high-risk condition, which at times is equated to a medical miracle.