IIT Madras' virtual reality model helps Chennai doctors implant pump in boy’s heart
Among thousands looking forward to international travel curbs to be lifted is an 11-year-old Egyptian boy for whom spending the lockdown amount of time in India has come with a new life as he underwent an essential heart surgery using a virtual reality model produced by the IIT Madras. The kid underwent the life-saving surgery at Chennai’s MGM hospital using the virtual reality model to implant a heart pump, after he was turned down by several hospitals in america and Europe.
According to Dr KK Balakrishnan, Director of the Institute of Heart and Lung Transplant, MGM Healthcare, this is an initial of its kind implant surgery successfully performed in India, while similar procedures have already been performed twice in america.
The technique will also be presented on Monday at the Annual conference of The American Society of Artificial ORGANS in Chicago. The meeting is going on virtually as a result of COVID-19 pandemic.
“Who could have imagined that playstation-type glasses worn on the top and visualising spectacular images in a 3D environment can save a child’s life ? The boy was suffering from a life-threatening condition called restrictive cardiomyopathy and extreme pulmonary hypertension (high pressure in lungs) with recurrent heart failure admissions for the last one year. He was airlifted within an air ambulance from Cairo prior to the lockdown was announced,” he told PTI.
“He was a frail, very ill boy, skin and bones and drifting in and out of consciousness. After being turned down by several hospitals in america and Western Europe, the child was referred to me by the paediatric cardiologist in Cairo treating the kid. The reason why he was rejected by several hospitals was simple. His high lung pressure meant a heart transplant was eliminated and there are no commercially available long term implantable heart pumps called LVADs or Left Ventricular assist devices for a kid of this size on earth,” he added.
The physician explained that after arrival here, the child’s heart failure worsened, and the only choice was to consider whether somehow, a battery-operated, mechanical pump could be implanted to greatly help the left chamber of the heart to pump blood to all of those other body.
“There have been two major impediments. The prevailing pumps are designed for adults and could they be fitted in to the small chest cavity of a kid? Imagine if the chest could not be closed following the operation? That might be a disaster. Also, how big is the heart chamber, the left ventricle was a major concern, since it was heavily muscular, packed with excess, useless muscle with very small cavity size. There is no way of knowing if the pump can be fitted inside heart or it'll be sticking out, if it had been too big,” he said.
Balakrishna then reached out to the IIT Madras’ department of engineering design to check on if a virtual reality model could be built from the CT scan of the kid and the pump, so a virtual implant could possibly be carried out to ensure that the implant was possible.
“A virtual model was built and wearing head mounted 3 D glasses, such as a video game, the pump could be implanted virtually, in various positions, to be sure that the task was possible. Armed with the confidence of the knowledge, the implant was completed and it was an excellent success,” said Krishna Kumar, Professor, IIT Madras.
“The boy has recovered rapidly, gained weight and has taken to dancing to Bollywood songs. They are waiting to come back to Cairo, once flights restrictions are lifted,” he added.
International travel from the united states has been suspended since March 22 prior to the nationwide lockdown to contain spread of novel coronavirus. Near 6 million coronavirus infections have already been reported worldwide, with an increase of than 365,000 deaths and almost 2.5 million recoveries, according to a tally by the Johns Hopkins University.
