A testament to the power of minimally invasive modern cardiac care.
KOLKATA, May23 (The CONNECT)-A nine-month-old baby girl from Hili in Dakshin Dinajpur has made a miraculous recovery after undergoing a rare, life-saving cardiac procedure without surgery at Medica Superspecialty Hospital, A unit of Manipal Hospitals Network.
Dr. Anil Kumar Singhi, Head – Paediatric Cardiology & Senior Interventional Cardiology, with the critical support of a multidisciplinary team comprising doctors from Anaesthesia, Cardiology, and Paediatrics, led the procedure. The
CTVS surgical team was on standby to handle any emergency.
The procedure was performed under the Government of West Bengal’s Sishu Saathi scheme, which ensures free treatment for children with heart diseases from poor families.
Baby “Ananya” (name changed), born to a farmer’s family, had been having trouble in breathing and poor weight gain since early infancy during the end of 2024. Her parents grew increasingly worried as her condition worsened and she failed to thrive despite medications. At around four months of age, she was diagnosed locally with a complex congenital heart defect.
She was referred to Medica Superspecialty Hospital, where a detailed evaluation by the Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease team, led by Dr. Singhi, revealed a rare and serious defect called aortopulmonary window -an abnormal connection between the heart’s two major arteries — the aorta and the pulmonary artery. This was causing four times the normal blood flow into her lungs, causing her heart failure.
“This defect is typically treated through open-heart surgery, ideally before six months of age.,” DrSinghi said. “At nine months, the risk of lung damage was high, but we decided to attempt a less invasive transcatheter closure at Medica. We inserted a closure device through tiny blood vessels in the baby’s leg, guided it to her heart, and sealed the defects all under sedation and local anesthesia,” he said.
The first attempt was unsuccessful,but the doctors persisted and succeeded on the second try. The device was positioned perfectly, and the baby’s lung pressure dropped dramatically within minutes,” he said.
“Closing such a large heart defect in such a small child without open-heart surgery is rarest of rare. Her quick recovery shows what is medically possible with timely intervention and the right expertise,” Dr Singhi said.
The procedure was done on May14, 2025, and the baby was shifted to the ICU for observation and discharged the very next day, stable, smiling, and feeding well — a testament to the power of minimally invasive modern cardiac care.
Expressing her gratitude with tears in her eyes, Ananya’s mother said, “We had lost all hope. She was not eating, not growing, always gasping. We had no money for surgery. But the doctors at Medica treated her like their own child. Thanks to them and the government’s help, our daughter is alive and smiling today.”
Dr. Ayanabh Debgupta, Regional Chief Operating Officer, Manipal Hospitals – East, said, Manipal Hospitals, always strives to provide state-of-the-art to all patients, including those from underserved communities.
