Ranit Kr. Singh , New Delhi — In a historic medical milestone for India, a Delhi hospital has successfully performed life-saving heart transplants on two brothers 11 years apart. Both siblings developed advanced Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM)—a rare, inherited genetic condition that causes the heart muscle to become enlarged, weak, and progressively unable to pump blood. The younger brother, aged 27, recently underwent the complex surgery at Fortis Escorts in Okhla, following in the footsteps of his elder sibling who received a successful transplant at the exact same facility back in 2015 when he was just 16 years old.

The recent procedure presented severe technical hurdles for the medical team due to significant size mismatches between the donor and recipient blood vessels, demanding highly specialized surgical adjustments during the operation. The life-saving organ was harvested from a 37-year-old male donor from Rohtak, Haryana, who had tragically passed away from an intracranial hemorrhage. Led by Dr. Z. S. Meharwal, Chairman of Adult Cardiac Surgery, and Dr. Vishal Rastogi, Director of Cardiology, the exact same surgical team managed both cases over the span of more than a decade, marking a historic first for familial cardiomyopathy treatment in India.

Doctors revealed that the younger brother's condition came to light after he began suffering from severe progressive breathlessness, falling exercise capacity, and frequent emergency hospitalizations. Cardiologists noted that inherited genetic mutations responsible for familial cardiomyopathy can silently linger for years before triggered into active heart failure, prompting the medical team to officially recommend immediate cardiac screening for all remaining family members. Fortis Escorts management confirmed this historic feat brings their total institutional tally to 23 successful heart transplants to date.