His heart beat nearly 200 times a minute — Delhi doctors save 7-year-old Iraqi boy

Dubai: When little Ali (name changed), a 7-year-old boy from Iraq, arrived in New Delhi, his tiny heart was beating nearly 200 times a minute — twice as fast as it should.

Every breath left him exhausted, every day weighed down by a heart rhythm disorder that doctors in his country could not safely treat.

For years, the child lived on heavy medication that dulled his energy but never eased his condition. Born with an abnormal electrical circuit in his heart, ANI reported.

Ali’s pulse often spiked between 170 and 200 beats per minute — dangerously above the normal range for children. At only 26kilos, his frail frame made any surgical procedure extremely risky.

• When the heart beats 200 times a minute

• A healthy child’s heart beats 75–118 times a minute.

• At 200 beats per minute, the heart can’t pump blood properly — it quivers instead of contracting effectively, a condition known as tachycardia.

• If untreated, it may cause:

• Dizziness and fainting

• Shortness of breath

• Fatigue or chest pain

• In severe cases, heart failure

• Doctors use Radiofrequency Ablation — a precise, heat-based procedure — to destroy the faulty electrical pathway and restore a normal rhythm.

Desperate for hope, his parents brought him to Fortis Escorts Heart Institute (FEHI) in Delhi, where a team led by Dr Aparna Jaswal, Director, Department of Cardiac Pacing and Electrophysiology, and Dr Amitesh Chakraborty, Senior Consultant, took on the challenge.

The doctors decided to perform an Electrophysiology Study — a diagnostic test that maps the heart’s electrical system — followed by a Radiofrequency Ablation, a procedure that uses controlled heat to destroy the faulty heart tissue causing the irregular rhythm. Such a procedure is rarely attempted in children under 30 kilos, as even a minor error can damage delicate blood vessels.

After two hours of meticulous work, the team successfully isolated and treated the abnormal electrical pathway. The child’s heart rhythm returned to normal — and for the first time in years, he could breathe easily.

“Normally, such procedures are delayed until the child gains more weight,” said Dr Aparna Jaswal. “But his condition was deteriorating rapidly and could have led to heart failure. Careful planning and precise execution were critical. Seeing him resume a normal life within a week was truly rewarding.”

Dr Jaswal noted that supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) — the most common arrhythmia in children — affects about 1 in 1,000 worldwide. “Pediatric ablations in such young, underweight patients are rare, but this case shows what’s possible with the right expertise and technology,” she added.

Dr Vikram Aggarwal, Facility Director at Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, said the hospital’s specialised Pediatric Electrophysiology Program is among the few in India equipped to handle such high-risk cases. “Every year, we treat children from across India and abroad whose conditions were considered untreatable elsewhere,” he said.

A week after surgery, Ali was up and running around the hospital ward — his heartbeat steady, his parents overjoyed.

For them, Delhi became the city where a small heart found a new rhythm of life.