Times of India
03 July 2010

Ludhiana In a rare surgery performed by doctors of the Hero DMC Heart Institute (HDHI) and DMCH, a seven–month pregnant woman diagnosed with aortic dissection was saved and so was her baby, through a ceasarean operation.

The patient, Bhupinder Kaur (25) was a district–level volleyball player at Sirsa and has no history of any disease. She delivered a boy weighing 900 grams.

The child is now recovering well and is likely to be discharged from hospital in nearly 10 days.

Expenses involved in both surgeries were Rs 4.5 lakh. After feeling acute difficulty in breathing on June 16, she was taken to HDHI, where she was diagnosed with aortic dissection by Dr N K Sood.

An urgent cardiac surgery was recommended, but her advanced pregnancy posed grave complications. A team of doc tors from HDHI and DMCH, comprising senior consultant cardiac surgeon Dr Sarju Ralhan, consultant cardiac anaesthetist Dr Vivek Gupta, Associate Professor, Department of Gynaecology, Dr Ashima Taneja and Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Dr Siddharth Bhargava, decided to go ahead both cardiac surgery and caesarean delivery on the same day itself.

The operations were conducted successfully and the child was delivered in the cardiac OT itself. Dr Ralhan told Newsline: "Aortic dissection means that the wall of aorta gets a cut and the blood, instead of going in vessels, starts going in the wall of the aorta. Such cases are very rare and so far, not more than 50 cases have been seen, as per the health journals reports. In my 15 years’ career, this was the first case. During pregnancy, due to increase in body fluids and wear and tear of tissues, risk of aortic dissection increases.”