heart transplant
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A man has been left with two hearts after surgeons discovered a donated organ was too small minutes before a life-saving transplant.

Following a seven-hour procedure the 56-year-old has become one of only 150 people worldwide to have ever undergone such an operation.

He was suffering from end stage heart failure and had been admitted to Apollo hospital in the South Indian city of Hyderabad, where surgeons discovered the discrepancy in organ size.

Dr A.G. Krishna Gokhale said the donor heart, belonging to a brain dead 17-year-old, was a normal fist-size while the recipient's was the size of a small football.

There was no time to wait for another donor as the patient was in a critical condition.

So, the doctors decided to keep the old heart rather than risk replacing it.

They cut away a part of the patient's pericardium and squeezed the new heart between the right lung and the original organ.

The new heart has been connected to the diseased heart and both beat in unison to ensure a smooth blood circulation in the body.

"The surgery - known as a heterotopic or piggyback heart transplant - is rare and worldwide only about 150 such procedures have ever been reported," said Dr Gokhale.

The patient has made a good recovery but doctors say he will have to keep a close watch on his hearts as there could be new complexities.

His ECG has got more complex with two sets of pulses. If a heart-related issue arises again in future there would be an increased amount of difficulty in zeroing in on the affected organ, they said.