Ambulance carrying harvested lungs meets with road accident, swift action saves patient

Pune: An ambulance carrying harvested lungs from a hospital near Pune met with an accident on its way to the city airport, but quick action by a surgeon and his medical team saved the life of a patient in Chennai, where the lung transplant surgery was successfully performed hours later.

The incident occurred in Pimpri Chinchwad township near Pune on Monday.

Dr Sanjeev Jadhav, a noted heart and lung transplant surgeon and his medical team, said he suffered injuries in the accident, but performed the lung transplant surgery on the 26-year-old patient in the Tamil Nadu capital.

Dr Jadhav, the chief cardiothoracic surgeon at Apollo Hospital in Navi Mumbai, said that after their ambulance met with an accident due to a suspected tyre burst on Harris Bridge in Pimpri Chinchwad, he did not waste time and got into another vehicle that was trailing the ambulance. They reached the Pune airport with the harvested lung, where a chartered plane was waiting to fly to Chennai, he said.

The lungs of a 19-year-old man who had died of suicide was retrieved at the D Y Patil Hospital in Pimpri Chinchwad on Monday. The organ was scheduled to be transported to Chennai-based Apollo Hospital, where a patient was supposed to undergo the lung transplant procedure.

The viability of the retrieved organ is generally six hours and within that period, the organ transplant must take place, so it was paramount to transport the organ to Chennai for transplant surgery on the patient, he said.

'After harvesting the lung, we left the D Y Patil Hospital for the Pune airport, where a chartered plane was waiting to go to Chennai. While we were on the way, our ambulance met with an accident around 5 pm on Monday, possibly due to a tyre burst,' he said.

'The impact of the accident was very high as the front part of the ambulance got badly mangled after it hit a bridge railing and the oxygen cylinder got flung outside,' he said.

Dr Jadhav said he suffered injuries on his head, hands and knee, while other members of his team were also hurt.

'We first rushed the driver to D Y Patil Hospital as he was also injured and engaged another vehicle of the hospital which was trailing us and reached the airport by 6 pm as transporting the organ in stipulated time was important,' he recalled.

'When we reached Apollo Hospital in Chennai, the surgery was already undergoing and by late evening, the lung transplant surgery was also performed successfully. We are happy that the patient got a new lease of life due to the lung transplant,' he added.