Mathew Akkadan, the organ recipient who was first transported in Kerala by air ambulance, died on Monday, more than a decade after heart transplant surgery. According to his family, 57-year-old Ashdan suffered a cardiac arrest at a private hospital in Chalakudy in Thrissur district.
“Ashdan’s death is very sad. We overcame a lot of challenges to do the transplant surgery (in 2015). At that time, his chances of surviving at least a year were only 50%. But after the surgery, he continued to live for another 10 years. He also engaged in hard physical labor during this period, especially driving his rickshaw to support his family,” said Joe Joseph, a consultant cardiologist at Lizzie Hospital in Kochi, who was part of the hospital. From the team under the leadership of Dr. Jose Chacko Periyapuram who performed the surgery on Ashdan in 2015.
At 7:35 pm on July 24, 2015, when a Navy Dornier plane landed at Kochi airport from Thiruvananthapuram, it marked a historic event – the first time an organ had been transported by air ambulance for transplantation in Kerala. Later that night, a heart belonging to a lawyer who was declared brain dead at a hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, was successfully transplanted into the body of Ashdan, an auto-rickshaw driver, at Lisi Hospital.
Dr. Joseph said that follow-up treatment is absolutely essential for organ transplants and Ashadan has been attending regular annual check-ups.
“He visited the hospital last March this year for follow-up. There were no major complications at that time. But studies show that the survival rate drops to 50% 10 years after organ transplantation. At the time of his transplantation, conditions were not smooth. That is why we are very proud of the surgery we performed on him,” Dr. Joseph said.
Ashdan, a resident of Pariyaram in Thrissur district, was admitted to Lizzie Hospital in Kochi in 2015 after he was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which, in his case, a heart transplant was the only option. He was immediately added to the waiting list of the Kerala Network for Organ Sharing (KNOS).
To the relief of Ashadan and his family, the heart became available at the last minute after S. Neelakanta Sharma, a 46-year-old lawyer in Thiruvananthapuram, was declared brain dead at Sree Chitra Institute of Medical Sciences after a fall at home. Sharma’s family agreed to donate his heart to Ashdan and four other organs to other recipients across the state.
“At that time, there was not much awareness about organ donation. So we decided to do it to spread the word and help the needy. We later formed a fund that provides assistance annually to the needy on my husband’s death anniversary. Ashdan and his family participated in an event on the occasion of the eighth anniversary,” Lata Sharma, the lawyer’s wife, told local media on Monday.
After the Sharma family agreed to the donation and medical procedures showed a match with Ashdan’s, doctors and officials deliberated on how to transport the organ to Kochi from the state capital, a distance of more than 200 km and taking up to four hours by road even using a green corridor. Since land transportation was impractical, doctors, including Dr. Periyapuram, consulted the Navy if one of its planes could be borrowed as an air ambulance to transport the organ. Then the interventions of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Ernakulam MLA Hibi Eden proved decisive and a Dornier plane was chosen to fly to the state capital, harvest the organ and bring it back to Kochi for transplantation. The trip, which could have taken more than four hours, was completed in less than an hour.
By the night of July 24, 2015, the heart was successfully transferred into Ashdan’s body by the team of doctors led by Dr. Periyapuram, helping to prolong his life by more than a decade, till Monday.
