Guntur GGH performs first heart transplant

The Guntur Government General Hospital (GGH) has become the first hospital in the government sector to perform heart transplantation in the Telugu States. It is also the first heart transplantation performed in A.P. after bifurcation. Teams of doctors of the GGH transplanted the heart of a truck driver to a car driver.

By some quirk of fate, both the donor and recipient shared the same name and belonged to the same profession. Immabathuni Yedukondalu, a lorry driver, and Uppu Yedukondalu, a car driver, never met each other, but their fates have become inextricably intertwined.

The donor from Singh Nagar, Vijayawada, was involved in a road accident and declared brain dead a week ago. The recipient, diagnosed with a rare debilitating heart disorder — Cardiac Myopathy — was undergoing treatment at the GGH. The car driver’s wife, Vapsa, had to work as a domestic maid to feed her family.

The heart transplantation is also a milestone for the new State. It is the first time that a heart harvested here has been transplanted in a local hospital. A day after the donor was declared brain dead at NRI General Hospital, his organs were harvested and transplanted to four recipients. The heart was given to Uppu Yedukondalu at the Government GGH in Guntur, the liver to a patient at Manipal Hospital, Tadepalli, the kidney to a patient in Arun Kidney Centre, Vijayawada, and the eyes to Vasan Eye Care, Vijayawada. The donor met with a road accident on May 13. .