Ambulance crashed; Doctor hurt still carries out operation in Chennai

Pune : A major road accident that left a cardiothoracic surgeon and an associate injured but didn’t stop them from performing their duty. The doctors carried a brain-dead man’s lungs in Pimpri-Chinchwad, Maharashtra, and travelled to Chennai to save a patient’s life.

Early on Tuesday, hours after the ambulance transporting him and his team and the harvested organ collided with two cars and the Harris Bridge wall on the way to Lohegaon airport, Dr. Sanjeev Jadhav of Navi Mumbai’s Apollo Hospitals successfully performed the planned lung transplant on a patient from Kerala.

After moving the majority of the team—many of whom had injuries—to a backup car that had been following the ambulance, Dr. Jadhav and another physician arrived at the airport to board a charter flight to Chennai.

The patient was receiving life support at the hospital in Chennai when the surgeon performed the lung transplant.

According to Dr. Jadhav, the organ recipient had been receiving the highest level of life support—extracorporeal membrane oxygenation—for the previous 72 days. He would have died if the transplant had not taken place on Monday. The patient is now doing well.

The surgeon related that he was sitting next to the ambulance driver during the three-vehicle collision and that he sustained injuries to his head, hand, and leg. However, they made the decision to move on and forget about the mishap. On the operating table already, the patient was present. They could have used the harvested organ for a maximum of 6 or 8 hours.

By 5:00 p.m., the ambulance had departed for the airport. Following the collision, a few medical personnel lingered to transport the hurt driver to the hospital.

The lungs arrived at Apollo Hospital at 7:30 p.m. after the charter plane touched down in Chennai on schedule. On Tuesday, the transplant was finished about 1:30 a.m.

Shreyas Vange

Sancheti College

Care