The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Surgeries help his heart find its ‘normal’ rhythm

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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Surgeries help his heart find its ‘normal’ rhythm

Ramya Kannan

Arpan, afflicted with a rare congenital condition, is up and about

— Photo: K. Pichumani

GRITTY SURVIVOR: Arpan Vaidya, who has undergone four open-heart surgeries, at Frontier Lifeline Hospital in Mogappair, Chennai.

CHENNAI: “Cardiologist” was one of the first few words that Arpan Vaidya uttered when he learnt to speak, rather belatedly for his age. “Dr. K.M. Cherian, his cardiac surgeon, would ask him, what would you like to be, and Arpan, who hardly spoke a few words, would gurgle cardiologist,” his older sister Ruchi Vaidya recalls.

It turns out that Arpan did not quite follow up on his dream; he now has top grades in an engineering college in Gujarat. But, no one is complaining. His family and friends are in awe of the sprightly young man, who was born with a congenital heart defect, and has survived four major open-heart surgeries to play a cheerful rhythm on his tabla.

It was in 1989, when he was four months old, that he turned blue. Rather belatedly, doctors discovered that he had Transposition of the Great Arteries, a rare congenital condition, in which the pulmonary artery and the aorta are not wired as they are meant to be. This meant the impure blood and the pure blood ran through two independent channels, slowly turning Arpan’s body, which was not getting oxygenated blood, blue.

The hunt began for a doctor who would take the risk of operating on Arpan at such an advanced stage, his father Haresh Vaidya says. The search ended when the Vaidyas found Dr. Cherian in 1989. “The belief then was that the classical arterial switch surgery, as described by the Brazilian cardiac surgeon Jatene, to correct the condition must be done in 30 days. Now, we have come to accept 6-8 weeks. When Arpan first came to me, he was four months old,” Dr. Cherian says. Since then, four surgeries have been performed on him, the last one, the arterial switch surgery as defined by the Brazilian Jatane, just a few weeks ago. Dr.Cherian believes it will be Arpan’s final open-heart surgery. Surgeons fitted his heart with a valve-tube, made at Dr. Cherian’s Frontier Lifeline, which would facilitate the appropriate flow of blood from the heart into the lungs and through the body. The valve, adult sized, would be “good for life,” Dr. Cherian says. Arpan can lead a perfectly normal life.

For him, it means swimming, performing with his tabla at shows, hanging out with his friends and hogging the top grades at the engineering college. “Dr. Cherian, whom we trust implicitly, has told us that Arpan can have a perfectly normal life. It is such a relief,” says Madhurima Vaidya, his mother. Arpan, who came to terms with his condition long ago, has never really doubted that it would eventually be possible. Even as his family gushes around him, taking pictures, Arpan’s fingers are already drumming silently on the hospital pillow, possibly in tune with his “normal” heart rhythm.

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