On December 22, 2025, Ernakulam General Hospital, a government-run district hospital in Kerala, successfully performed a heart transplant, becoming the first district-level hospital in India to carry out the procedure. The recipient was a 22-year-old woman from Nepal with end-stage heart disease. Doctors shifted her to the intensive care unit after surgery for close observation.
Heart transplantation is among the most complex surgical procedures and has traditionally been limited to large tertiary-care or private hospitals due to the need for specialized teams, advanced equipment, and prolonged post-operative care.
The recipient, Durga Kaami, suffered from a rare inherited cardiac condition that progressively weakened her heart. Over time, medical therapy was no longer sufficient to maintain adequate heart function. Doctors identified heart transplantation as the only definitive treatment to improve survival.
Durga travelled to Kerala seeking treatment. As a non-Indian citizen, she initially did not qualify for priority listing under the state’s transplant system. Following legal review, she was permitted to register under the Kerala State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (K-SOTTO), allowing her to receive a donor heart.
The donor was Shibu, a 46-year-old man from Kollam, Kerala, who sustained severe injuries in a road traffic accident earlier in December. After repeated neurological examinations, doctors declared him brain-dead on December 21, 2025, in accordance with established medical protocols.
With consent from his family, his organs were donated through the state’s organ-sharing network. Apart from the heart, his kidneys, liver, corneas, skin, and other tissues were transplanted into multiple recipients at different hospitals across Kerala.
The donor heart was retrieved from Thiruvananthapuram Government Medical College and transported to Ernakulam using an air ambulance to reduce transport time and preserve organ viability.
At Ernakulam General Hospital, a trained cardiothoracic surgical team performed the transplant. During the procedure, surgeons removed the patient’s diseased heart and implanted the donor heart while maintaining circulation using a cardiopulmonary bypass machine. The donor heart was then connected to the major blood vessels, allowing it to resume pumping blood.
After surgery, the patient was transferred to intensive care for continuous monitoring. Post-transplant care focuses on maintaining heart function, preventing infection, and reducing the risk of organ rejection through immunosuppressive medications. Hospital authorities confirmed that the patient remained under close observation following the procedure.
(Rh/SS/MSM)
