Paediatric-cardiac surgeon starts city’s first dedicated baby heart centre

Nagpur: Paediatric-cardiac surgeon Dr Sandeep Khanzode has started city’s and Vidarbha’s first dedicated Baby Heart Centre (BHC) at Central Hospital on Central Bazaar Road.
The hospital, with state-of-art technology, offers all kinds of medical and surgical treatment for all types of heart diseases and defects among children. The BHC has a ten-bed Paediatric Intensive Cardiac Care Unit (PICCU) and a ten-bed ward.
Though Dr Khanzode has conducted open heart surgeries and corrected all other types of congenital (by birth) defects since 2009 in the city beginning from a one-day-old child, it is for the first time that he is doing this in a dedicated set up meant for heart surgeries only for children.
The centre has facility for open heart surgeries, heart valve surgeries, minimal invasive surgeries, pace makers and even for adults suffering from any congenital heart defect. It has a Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) system to monitor the babies during operation in the theatre and ICU. This is also the first such modality in city.
Dr Khanzode told TOI that he closed a hole in the heart on a five-month-old baby girl weighing only 3.5kg. For the first time, a neonatal Trans Esophageal Echocardiography (TEE) probe was used for conducting an echo. It is the first such equipment in city. The TEE is stationed in the oesophagus (initial part of food pipe) and it can take the echo of the baby’s heart before, during and after the surgery.
“This baby (Astha) had a very big hole in the heart (ventricular septal defect) and was refused surgery by various centres in Nagpur and other cities. But using this echo probe, we could easily judge that it was possible to do a VSD correction using sauvage pack made from polyester utilized routinely for the purpose. The TEE was used post-surgery again to check successful hole closure,” said Dr Khanzode.
But after the hole closure, the natural heart rhythm of the baby was affected and so, a pace maker was also put on the chest to correct the arrhythmia. The machine will remain on the body all throughout the life of the patient. “The baby can live a totally normal life with the pace maker,” said Dr Khanzode, who has earlier operated on just 2-3 days old baby hearts.
He has done 2,500 surgeries with success rate of 98% in the last four years, which is comparable to any world-class centre.
The baby’s father Sandeep Dubey, a private driver, and mother Arti told TOI said that they did not realize the problem till the baby was three months old. “But when the baby stopped gaining weight after that, we were told by the paediatrician Dr Kiran Vaidya that there was a problem in the baby’s heart,” they said. The total procedure cost the family Rs 3 lakh.
The TEE was done by Dr Pramod Ambatkar, an interventional paediatric cardiologist trained in Fortis Escorts Heart Institute at New Delhi. “This probe can remain in the oesophagus throughout the surgery and can do an echo immediately after the surgery,” he said.
Dr Vinay Kulkarni and Dr Shrikant Bobade, the two cardiac anaesthesiologists and intensivists who have expertise in managing all sorts of complex congenital heart patients, supported the patient during and after the surgery.