Coimbatore: For the first time in the district, a heart transplant was performed under the Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme. The surgery was performed on Tuesday evening on the 26-year-old son of a small-time farmer from Gobichettipalayam.In what would come as a relief for hundreds of poor people suffering from various forms of heart failure and believe they cannot afford a transplant surgery, the insurance covered the entire surgery expenses and medication for the patient for a year.The 26-year-old man had been suffering from idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy, a form of heart failure caused by no specific reason, for the past few years.About one-and -half years ago, a doctor in their village diagnosed it as heart failure. Six months ago, he was referred to Coimbatore-based Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital, which put him on the organ transplant wait list.The family that was from a poor background had almost accepted that their son, whose heart function had dropped to 15%, was going to die because they may not get a heart in time and anyway could not afford the surgery. “However, we contacted Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project in November and applied for coverage for this patient. In December we got an approval,” said KMCH’s chief cardio thoracic surgeon Dr Prashanth Vaijyanath.Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project agreed to pay Rs 14lakh for the surgery and recovery and Rs 1lakh for medication, which should be taken for a year. “Any transplant patient needs immunosuppressants to avoid organ rejection for a year. It costs about Rs 10,000 a month,” he said.The patient got the heart from a young bank employee from Sulur, David Raj, who was declared brain dead after he had fallen off a building.Deputy director of Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project Uma said as on January 2, it had approved 57 cases of isolated heart transplants43 in the private sector and 14 in the government sector.However, data on how many of those surgeries were performed was not available.Heart transplants occur more rarely than liver and kidney transplants because many patients’ condition worsens before they receive an organ that matches theirs. Rejection rates are also high. Only seven heart transplants have been performed in Coimbatore, since 2014, when the first one was performed.

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