Anandapur: Dilchand Singh, who had a heart transplant on Monday, got off his bed and walked for the first time since the operation on Thursday, doctors said.

He also sat on a chair for a few minutes in the isolation room of the intensive care unit of Fortis Hospital in Anandapur, off the Bypass.

"Just three days have passed since the transplant, the patient is doing better than our expectations. His clinical parameters are stable and blood reports are normal. The heart is beating without any support," said a spokesperson for the hospital.

A doctor said Singh was likely to be kept in the isolation room for the entire duration of his stay in the hospital to minimise chances of infection. A positive pressure (more than the atmospheric pressure) is being maintained in the room to prevent the entry of untreated air from outside.

The patient may be allowed in a few days to wear a mask and step out of the isolation room to get acclimatised with the outside environment.

"The days immediately after the transplant are crucial. We are happy with his progress but invasive monitoring of his vital parameters are on around the clock," a doctor, who was part of the team that performed the transplant, said.

A team led by K.R. Balakrishnan of Fortis Malar Hospital in Chennai transplanted the heart of a 21-year-old man declared brain dead in Bangalore in the 38-year-old at the city hospital.

Singh, a para-teacher from Jhanjhi village in Jharkhand's Deoghar district, had been suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart loses its ability to pump blood because of enlargement of its main pumping chamber, the left ventricle.

Around 30 patients awaiting a heart transplant are enrolled with the three hospitals in the city that have been issued a licence for cardiac transplant - Fortis Hospital, BM Birla Heart Research Centre and RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences.

Doctors say around 350 heart transplants are performed in India, the highest in the world. In the US, they say, about 300 transplants take place every year on an average.