Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences successfully operated on a nine-day-old infant who was born with a rare medical condition — his heart was protruding out of his chest.

After a three-and-a-half-hour surgery, the doctors said the procedure was successful and the baby was stable.

“The baby has been shifted to the ICU,” said Dr RC Deka, Director, AIIMS. “Though he is stable, this is a critical time and we are closely monitoring his condition.” The baby was suffering from a very rare congenital anomaly — Ectopia Cordis, a birth defect wherein the heart is abnormally located. It occurs in five to nine cases per million births and the mortality rate is very high.

The doctors who operated on the child maintain he is the first to survive this rare medical condition in India. Worldwide, 230 such cases have been reported and only three people have survived.