Dr Alla Gopala Krishna Gokhale is one of the best heart surgeons in India who has performed India’s first heart-kidney combined transplant. He has also achieved fame through performing heart transplant for a 69 year old person, the oldest man to undergo heart transplant in India.

If you are determined to get a heart transplant following the doctor’s advice, finding a suitable donor of heart with matching blood and tissue type would be the next step. When a donor is found, the surgery is conducted immediately while the organ is still viable (within four hours of extraction).

The procedure is such that the surgeon will remove existing heart, placing the person on a heart-lung machine, leaving the back wall of left atrium and pulmonary vein openings intact. The doctor then stitches the donor’s heart. The new heart starts beating once the blood flow to the heart is completely restored. The doctor will then remove the person from the heart-lung machine. At times, an electric shock is needed to make the heart start beating.

In the postoperative section, following the surgery, the patient will be under intensive care, being constantly monitored, fitted with tubes to drain out excess fluid from chest and under pain medications. The patient will be monitored for infections and anti-rejection medications will be provided so that the body doesn’t reject the transplanted heart. A full recovery may take around six months to an year. With follow ups, the patient can live a healthy life, monitoring their heart health.

Dr Gokhale has so far performed 34 successful heart transplant in hyderabad. He has excelled the art of Minimally invasive cardiothoracic surgery. This type of surgery can help those in need of multiple bypass grafts, closure of holes and valve replacements in the heart.

As heart transplantation surgeries in hyderabad are common, Dr Gokhale has acquired a success rate of 98.4% in heart transplants, lung transplants and open heart surgeries respectively. He has trained many heart surgeons in India and abroad on minimally invasive heart surgery.

He has published many articles in international journals and has also presented many papers at national conferences. Currently, he is  Director, Heart and Lung Transplantation Program Senior Consultant Cardiothoracic and Minimal Access Surgeon at Apollo Hospitals, Jubilee hills, Hyderabad. He has also worked at Yashoda Hospitals, Global Hospitals, Medicity Hospitals and NIMS. He has also done fellowship in Heart Transplantation and Lung Transplantation at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, Australia and at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St Louis, USA, with Dr. Nicholas Kouchoukos where he gained experience in aortic aneurysm surgeries, root repairs and redo coronary artery bypass surgery. He is currently the President of Indian Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation.

Dr Alla Gopala Krishna Gokhale

Cardiothoracic, Transplant and Minimal Access Cardiac Surgeon 

Apollo Hospitals, Jubilee hills, Hyderabad.