Around 240,000 babies are born with congenital heart disease in India every year, roughly one in every 100 newborns, making it the leading cause of birth defect-related deaths and accounting for nearly 10 percent of all infant deaths in the country. The defects are present. The surgical solutions exist. The gap that kills children sits between those two facts and in 2026 that gap is still far wider than it should be.
“The numbers are not abstract to me. Every year tens of thousands of Indian children who could have been saved with a timely intervention aren’t and the reason is almost never that the surgery was too difficult. It’s that nobody found them early enough or the family couldn’t access the right centre in time” says Dr. Prashant Bobhate, Pediatric Cardiologist in Mumbai, India.
What Do the Numbers Actually Look Like in India in 2026?
It creates a deliberate right-to-left shunt at the level of the great vessels that allows the overloaded right ventricle to decompress directly into the aorta rather than continuing to push against a pulmonary vascular resistance it can no longer overcome.
- Right ventricular decompression: The shunt allows blood to bypass the high-resistance pulmonary circulation entirely which immediately reduces the pressure load on a right ventricle that was heading toward failure and gives the chamber a chance to recover function it was rapidly losing.
- Maintains cardiac output: A failing right ventricle in severe PH can no longer maintain adequate systemic circulation and the Potts shunt preserves overall cardiac output even at the cost of some arterial oxygen desaturation which is an acceptable trade-off when the alternative is right heart collapse.
- Bridge to transplant: In children who are maxed out on medical therapy and deteriorating despite everything, the Potts shunt buys enough haemodynamic stability to reach lung transplant listing criteria and survive the wait in a condition where transplant is actually still feasible.
- Transcatheter approach: India’s first successful transcatheter Potts shunt was performed at this centre using a catheter-based technique rather than open surgery which reduces the procedural risk significantly in children who are already haemodynamically fragile and couldn’t safely tolerate a sternotomy at that point in their disease.
Understanding what interventional options exist for children with severe pulmonary hypertension who have exhausted conventional medical pathways is exactly what a thorough interventional treatment for pulmonary hypertension assessment maps out before any decision gets made.
Which Children With PH Actually Need a Potts Shunt?
Better than a decade ago, but still nowhere near where they should be
- Better Surgical Outcomes: Leading Indian paediatric cardiac centres now achieve outcomes comparable to global standards for common congenital heart surgeries when treated early
- Delayed Diagnosis Risk: Many children reach surgery late with complications like malnutrition or pulmonary hypertension, which worsens recovery
- Ayushman Bharat Support: PM-JAY has improved affordability, but specialist care remains concentrated in limited cities
- Fetal Diagnosis Advantage: Early detection through fetal echocardiography improves outcomes by enabling timely referral before complications develop
Parents wanting to understand why fetal cardiac detection matters should read about the importance of fetal diagnosis of critical congenital heart disease, as early detection can mean the difference between planned care and an emergency after birth.
Why Choose Dr. Prashant Bobhate for Potts Shunt and Severe PH Care in Mumbai?
The statistics describe a system problem. What matters to any individual family is whether the specialist in front of them has the training, the equipment and the experience to find the defect early, make the right call about timing and intervention and follow that child for as long as the heart needs watching. Dr. Prashant Bobhate has spent over 12 years managing congenital heart disease across every defect type and every level of complexity at the Children’s Heart Centre, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, one of Mumbai’s leading paediatric cardiac centres with fetal echo, interventional cardiology and surgical co-management all in one place
Schedule a consultation to find out if a cure is possible and what the right treatment plan looks like for you.
FAQs
Is the Potts shunt a cure for pulmonary hypertension in children?
Around 240,000 babies are born with congenital heart disease in India annually and of these roughly 50,000 have defects serious enough to need intervention within the first year of life.
What is the survival rate for children with congenital heart disease in India?
At high-volume specialist centres outcomes for standard repairs are now comparable to international benchmarks but delayed diagnosis, malnutrition at presentation and limited specialist access still significantly worsen outcomes for children outside major urban centres.
Which is the most common congenital heart defect in Indian children?
Ventricular septal defect is the most commonly diagnosed congenital heart defect in Indian children followed by atrial septal defect and these acyanotic lesions account for the large majority of CHD cases seen at tertiary cardiac centres.
Does Ayushman Bharat cover congenital heart surgery for children in India?
Yes for several procedures at empanelled hospitals but geographic concentration of surgical expertise and gaps between scheme package rates and actual procedure costs at private centres mean coverage on paper doesn’t always translate into accessible care in practice.
References:
- Saxena A. Congenital Heart Disease in India: A Status Report. Indian Pediatrics, 2018 — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30745481/
- Global CHD Burden 1990–2021, Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine, 2025 — https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cardiovascular-medicine/articles/10.3389/fcvm.2025.1522644/full