Two weeks after undergoing a path-breaking surgery — in which his protruding heart was put back in the chest cavity — the 22-day-old baby died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Wednesday.

The child had developed pneumonia and died due to multiple organ failure, hospital authorities said. The child, from Bihar, came to the Capital with his heart protruding out of the chest — a rare congenital anomaly Ectopia Cordis, where the heart is abnormally located — and was operated on September 3 at AIIMS.

The child was brought to the hospital by his father Chandar Majhi and was wrapped in a towel, with his heart protruding from the chest.

After the surgery, the child was shifted to the ICU and his condition was said to stable but critical. “He was brought to the hospital on August 28 (he was born on August 26). He had developed an infection by then as he was exposed to outside elements during his night-long train journey (from Bihar),” a senior doctor from AIIMS said.

A team comprising an anaesthetist, a paediatric surgeon and a cardio-thoracic surgeon at AIIMS successfully operated on the infant for three-and-a-half hours.

“We had created a window between the chest and abdomen to place the heart. Then gradually rotated the heart and put it back in the newly created space,” a doctor, who was part of the team, had said after the surgery.

AIIMS has conducted four such surgeries in the past, of which only one patient survived.