Mohammad Ahmed Baloch, a forty-day-old baby from Dera Allah Yar, Balochistan has become the first patient in Pakistan to survive on an artificial heart-lung machine for three days at Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH).
The baby was born with a severe heart defect, where the two major vessels that carry blood away from the heart were misconnected. What this meant was that he was a ‘blue’ baby and with less oxygen in the blood, always short of breath. Without surgery, he stood no chance of surviving.
Brought to the Hospital’s Emergency Room, he was just 10 days old when doctors performed an initial life-prolonging procedure. “We had to create a hole in his heart, between the right and left chambers, so that the bloods could mix better,” says Dr Mehnaz Atiq, the paediatric cardiologist.
At one month Ahmed was ready for the next step, an operation that ‘switches’ the heart’s blood vessels back to their normal position and would permanently correct the problem.
More: Forty-day-old baby with congenital heart disease survives on artificial heart machine for three days.
Ismailimail 