2nd heart transplant patient dies

2nd heart transplant patient dies

SINGAPORE (AFP): Singapore's longest-surviving local heart transplant patient, Krishnasamy Chandrasegaran, has died at the age of 47, 10 years after undergoing the operation, reports said on Wednesday.

Chandrasegaran, who had health problems for the past four years, died early on Tuesday, but the cause of death was not immediately known, the Straits Times reported. He had been on dialysis three times a week since both his kidneys failed in 1997.

Chandrasegaran became Singapore's second heart transplant patient in February 1991, the same month that the first patient died eight months after undergoing the first operation.

Since Singapore's transplant program began in 1990, 16 men and four women have received new hearts.

The longest surviving Singaporean heart transplant patient, 60-year-old former newspaper columnist Seah Chiang Nee, received his heart in Sydney in 1985, before the operations were available in Singapore.