Miracle Doctor
Sarmishta Ramesh
Dr.Mohan Reddy is known as the Miracle Doctor. He is the Chief of
Pediatric Cardiothoracic
Surgery at the prestigious Lucile Packard Hospital at Stanford University, California. Specializing in severely complex pediatric surgeries, Dr, Reddy created
Medical history when one of his patients became the smallest
baby ever to survive an open-
heart procedure involving an arterial switch. Dr. Reddy is perhaps the most respected children’s heart surgeons in the world who promises life to premature babies who have no help elsewhere.
Little Jerrick De Leon was
born on February 7th more than three months early. Diagnosed as a Blue baby, he weighed 700 grams. When the arteries leading to and from the heart are reversed, it affects the entire body. An infant born with this fatal condition is termed a Blue Baby. Medically it is known as Transposition of great arteries. Infants born in such a manner require surgery within the first week of their birth.
Jerrick born with a heart, with the size of a grape, had no chance of surviving a surgery. Jerrick’s mother, also a pediatric physician had heard of Dr. Reddy. She had her baby airlifted 1000 miles away, to Palo Alto in Northern California. When Dr. Reddy saw Jerrick he was technically still a foetus. His gestation period was incomplete, his lungs were weak and he was hooked on to a breathing machine. When his condition stabilized he was rushed into the operating room. The tissues of his heart were like tender pieces of paper that can tear easily. His aorta and pulmonary artery were 4 mm each. They had to reverse their positions and stitch it on to the right heart chambers. The sutures had to be really fine. The surgery lasted two and a half hours and the entire procedure with preparation time took six hours. Now, month’s later Dr.Mohan Redddy smiles with pleasure at the success of Jerrick’s surgery. Three years ago he had successfully performed a surgery on a preemie girl, 26 weeks old and 640 grams, for a condition called anomalous pulmonary veins.
As soon as the routing of Jerrick’s blood supply was altered, he had changed colors from blue to pink. A record setting feat in the medical circles, Jerrick’s surgery is the result of Dr. Reddy’s prowess in his given calling. Dr.Reddy did his MBBS in Kakatia Medical College in Warangal; Andhra Pradesh.He pursued an MS in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. After winning a fellowship in pediatric cardiac surgery he worked in children’s hospitals in Boston, Miami and San Francisco. It was Dr.Frank Hanley who offered him a position at the Stanford Children’s Hospital.
Currently he maintains his relationship with India. Every year he organizes a team of physicians through Stanford Medical Association and Heartlink to perform surgeries in India. His patients are small, innocent babies who get a new lease to life, unaware of their medical achievements. When the families of his patients are thankful with praises, he brushes it off with humility. When referred to as a Miracle Maker, Dr. Reddy calls himself a good pediatric surgeon and refers to God as the Miracle Maker. With his complex and astonishingly challenging open-heart surgeries, Dr Mohan Reddy has created a niche for himself in the field of pediatric medicine.
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