NEW DELHI: Skipping medicines without the doctor’s advice can prove fatal Sunanda Sharma (name changed), a 30-year-old heart patient from Rewari in Haryana, learned this the hard way recently when both she and her newborn nearly died due to one such mistake.Sharma, who underwent a heart valve replacement surgery seven years ago, was expecting her first child in January. A few days before the scheduled delivery, she stopped taking her blood thinner medicines.Due to this, clots developed over her mechanical heart valve and it stopped functioning. “Within two to three days, her condition deteriorated significantly. She couldn’t breathe and had to be put on ventilator support. Sharma was diagnosed with low cardiac output with pulmonary edema, which in simple terms means her heart wasn’t working optimally and there was excessive fluid in the lungs,” said Dr Abhay Kumar, director of cardio thoracic and vascular surgery (CTVS), Aakash Healthcare , Dwarka.He added that the would-be-mother required an emergency surgery to repair the heart valve, but that couldn’t be done with the baby in the womb. Therefore, a team of cardiac anaesthetists and gynaecologists first delivered the baby through caesarean section.Dr Gourav Jain, the cardiac anaesthetist, said the delivery was successful, but they were shocked to see the child wasn’t crying. “The newborn had no heartbeat and she wasn’t breathing, possibly due to heavy medications the mother was given. They are known to have suppressed the baby’s heart and lung’s function,” Dr Jain said. It took continued chest compression and medications injected through the umbilical cord to revive the baby. “She remained on ventilator for nearly a week, till her heart and lung functions improved,” the doctor said.While the baby was being delivered, the mother’s condition remained critical. She, too, suffered a heart attack twice even as the doctors prepared to operate on her to restore the heart valve.“We had almost given up. But the family insisted we keep trying regardless of the results. This encouraged us to undertake the surgery, and soon, she was resuscitated despite the dangerous low blood pressure,” CTVS surgeon Dr Kumar said.Sharma was put on cardio-pulmonary bypass machine, while the surgeons removed the clot from the mechanical valve. “Both the mother and the child remained in medical care for 10 days, and once their condition stabalised, they were discharged. The child is doing fine and the mother’s condition has improved too,” the doctors said.

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