31-year-old brain dead woman's heart airlifted, transplanted into air warrior in Pune

aixNagpur: A harvested human heart was airlifted from Nagpur to Pune in an IAF plane on Wednesday morning and later transplanted into a recipient admitted to the Army Institute of Cardio-Thoracic Sciences (AICTS) in the western Maharashtra city.

The live heart, retrieved from a woman declared brain dead, was successfully transplanted into the recipient, a male air warrior at the Pune-based AICTS, later in the day. 

The vital organ was sent through a green corridor created by the civil administration before being transported to Pune, more than 700 km from Nagpur, on an Indian Air Force (IAF) AN-32 aircraft in the "most expeditious" manner, said a defence release here. The flying time was around 90 minutes, said an official.

A separate press release issued by the zonal transplant coordination centre here said the donor of the heart was a 31-year-old woman, Shubhangi Gannyarpawar, who resided in Nagpur with her husband and one- and-a-half-year old daughter. The woman was admitted in a private hospital in Nagpur on July 20 after complaining of severe headache and was later diagnosed with severe blood clotting in the brain, said the release.