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A 56-year-old man received a life-saving cardiac surgery but ended up with two beating hearts inside his chest.

The man, suffering from end-stage heart failure, had been admitted to Apollo hospital in the South Indian city of Hyderabad, to undergo a heart transplant surgery.

When a heart of a brain dead 17-year-old donor became available on February 10, Apollo surgeons realised that it was too small for the recipient.

“The donor heart was of normal fist-size. The recipient’s heart was the size of a small football,” Dr A.G. Krishna Gokhale said.

There was no time to wait for another donor as the patient was in a critical condition.

So, the doctors decided to keep the old heart rather than replace it.
They cut away a part of the patient pericardium and squeezed the new heart between the right lung and the original heart in a procedure that lasted seven hours.

The new heart has been connected to the diseased heart, which continues to be in its place. Both the hearts beat complementing each other to ensure a smooth blood circulation in the body.

“The surgery, heterotopic or piggyback heart transplant, is rare and worldwide only about 150 such procedures have ever been reported,” said Dr Gokhale.

The patient has recovered satisfactorily and the doctors say he will have to keep a close watch on his heart as there could be new complexities.

A 56-year-old man received a life-saving cardiac surgery but ended up with two beating hearts inside his chest.

The man, suffering from end stage heart failure, had been admitted to Apollo hospital in the South Indian city of Hyderabad, to undergo a heart transplant surgery.

When a heart of a brain dead 17-year-old donor became available on February 10, Apollo surgeons realised that it was too small for the recipient.

“The donor heart was of normal fist-size. The recipient’s heart was the size of a small football,” Dr A.G. Krishna Gokhale said.

There was no time to wait for another donor as the patient was in a critical condition.

So, the doctors decided to keep the old heart rather than replace it.

They cut away a part of the patient's pericardium and squeezed the new heart between the right lung and the original heart in a procedure that lasted seven hours.

The new heart has been connected to the diseased heart, which continues to be in its place. Both the hearts beat complementing each other to ensure a smooth blood circulation in the body.

“The surgery, heterotopic or piggyback heart transplant, is rare and worldwide only about 150 such procedures have ever been reported,” said Dr Gokhale.

The patient has recovered satisfactorily and the doctors say he will have to keep a close watch on his heart as there could be new complexities.

His ECG has got more complex with two sets of pulses. If a heart-related issue arises again in future there would be an increased amount of difficulty in zeroing in on the affected organ, they said.