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Last week, Preeti Unhale (51) completed 25 years with a donor heart, becoming India’s longest-living heart transplant survivor. What makes her case a milestone in heart transplant surgery is that survival rate in such cases after 10 years is around 55 per cent. After 15 years, it shrinks to 25 per cent, as the recipients need life-long care, including daily immunosuppressants, and have very high chances of rejection of the donor heart by the body. Preeti has survived eight episodes of rejection, the last one in 2015.
