3 Months Arpit needs urgent heart surgery for complex heart defect

He is very weak and he keeps trying to pull in more air. He gets tired and starts crying and has to breathe even harder. His skin is becoming very dark – our own breath hurts when we see our baby suffer so much.” - Ram, the baby's father.

Ram & Pooja welcomed their first child in 25 October, 2022 . They were on cloud 9 and enjoying the parenthood. They both welcomed the child with lots of Joy but after a month, the child started showing signs of Cynosis ( Turning blue due to lack of oxygen supply in body & breathlessness). Both were thrilled to have their first child. Their happiness was replaced by a pain and anxiety when they found out that their baby had a severe heart defect. The part of the heart is underdeveloped and have large hole in the heart. Every day their baby grows weaker. The danger to his life is only increasing.

The child diagnosed with Double Outlet Right Ventricle ( DORV)- is a heart defect where the aorta connects to the heart in the wrong place.

Usually, the aorta is attached to the left ventricle (pumping chamber), and the pulmonary artery is attached to the right ventricle. With DORV, both vessels are attached to the right ventricle. Along with the misplaced aorta, Arpit also have a large 5 mm hole called Ventricular Septal Defect, a hole in the wall that normally separates the left and right ventricles.

What Happens in Double Outlet Right Ventricle (DORV)?

The normal heart has two main jobs:

It receives oxygen-poor blood back from the body and pumps it to the lungs to pick up a fresh supply of oxygen, making the blood oxygen-rich again.
It pumps oxygen-rich blood out to the body.

The heart does these jobs using two blood flow loops:

The right atrium receives oxygen-poor blood from the body and passes it to the right ventricle. The right ventricle then sends the oxygen-poor blood to the lungs through the pulmonary artery.
The left atrium gets oxygen-rich blood from the lungs, then passes it to the left ventricle (pumping chamber), which sends the oxygen-rich blood to the body through the aorta.

BUT ARPIT'S HEART WORKS IN THE BELOW MANNER:

Oxygen-rich blood from the lungs returns to the left ventricle, but can't leave through the aorta as it does in a normal heart.
The only way oxygen-rich blood can leave the left ventricle is to pass through the VSD into the right ventricle. There, it mixes with the oxygen-poor blood returning from the body.

With each heartbeat, the right ventricle squeezes the mixed blood out to the lungs through its normal outlet (the pulmonary artery) and out to the body through the misplaced aorta. The mixing of oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor blood makes the heart with DORV work harder than a normal heart usually does.

Arpit showing signs of :-

Fast breathing fast
Bluish skin
Sweating
poor feeding with little weight gain
sleepiness

An immediate surgery is this baby's only chance to live

I paint walls for a living and for a day's work, I earn Rs 300. Till last year, (de-monetisation), I didn't even have a bank account. What little I managed to save is spent on the checkups. Said Raj

Arpit needs urgent heart surgery and cost of surgery is Rs. 1 lacs in AIIMS hospital which is a government entity. Raj took the child to every possible hospital in India even in Satya Sai Sanjeevani Hospital in Palwal which offers free heart surgery for poor kids but they do not have doctors ho can treat such complex heart surgery. The cost of treatment in private hospital is Rs. 50 thousand a day which is next to impossible for Raj to bear.

Among government Hospital in India only AIIMS , Delhi can perfom such complex heart srgery at 100% succesfful rate.

Ram says that the baby likes to be picked up by his parents. He starts crying whenever he is put down. Nothing prepared these first-time parents to deal with their baby having such a serious heart defect. They have already borrowed heavily for checkups and the baby's medicines. They have nothing to arrange for a surgery that will let their baby breathe easier.