The Chennai-based Frontier Lifeline Hospital has completed 100 successful homograft implantations on patients requiring aortic and pulmonary valve replacements. A homograft (allograft) is a valve that is removed from a donated human heart, preserved and frozen in liquid nitrogen under sterile conditions. Both aortic and pulmonary artery valves can be removed from the same heart, sources from the hospital informed.

Homograft is particularly useful for surgical repair of babies who are born with complete absence of proximal portion of lung arteries (pulmonary atresia truncus arteriosis). It is an ideal valve for aortic valve replacement, especially in growing children, unmarried women, in valvular infections, etc.

According to the doctors, the heart's natural anatomy is preserved and patients do not need to be on any blood-thinner medications. Although the limited availability is a drawback in some settings, Frontier Lifeline maintains a large supply and has extensive experience with these valves.

"There are not many homograft valve banks in India and Frontier Lifeline operates the busiest homograft valve bank in the country. These valves can be harvested from non-viable hearts, ideally within 24 hours and sometimes even up to 48 hours if the body is preserved well under optimum conditions. If blood groups match between donor and recipient hearts, the results after grafting are even better. De-cellularization improves the outcome even further," Dr K M Cherian, chairman of the Hospital, said.

He further explained that whenever a transplant was undertaken, the recipient's explanted heart usually offered opportunities for harvesting both the valves. In the event of the availability of an immediate recipient for the freshly harvested valves - a homovital transplant is done whereby the recipient benefits instantly.

According to him, the economic benefits of maintaining an own homograft valve bank are tremendous. Earlier these valves were imported from UK expending huge amount of money. This exorbitant rate coupled with the introduction of laws has always discouraged regular usage. For this initiative, the government of Tamil Nadu has also helped a lot, Dr Cherian said.