A man was left with two beating hearts after surgeons performed a rare “piggyback” operation in a last-ditch attempt to save his life.

The 56 year-old Indian patient was meant to have a standard transplant operation but the doctors quickly realised the donor organ from a brain-dead teenager was too small.

Cardiothoracic surgeon A Gopala Krishna Gokhale turned to “Plan B” and connected the healthy heart to the old failing organ during a seven-hour operation at Apollo Hospital in Hyderabad last week.

His normal second heart, which is fist-sized, now sits between the right lung and the original heart, described as “the size of a small football”.

“Two hearts in the patient complement each other to facilitate circulation, but beat at different rates,” Dr Gokhale told The Hindu newspaper.

“It is once-in-a-lifetime procedure a doctor performs. The surgery – known as a heterotopic or piggyback heart transplant – is rare and worldwide only about 150 such procedures have ever been reported.”

The patient’s blood pressure returned to near-normal levels after the operation – but he now has two pulses and a complex electrocardiogram pattern.

The replacement heart was donated by a teenager who had recently died (Newsflare)

Piggyback heart transplants were pioneered by Christiaan Barnard in South Africa in the 1970s and the average survival for the procedure is ten years.

In the UK, Hannah Clark spent more than ten years with a second heart after undergoing the operation as a two-year-old baby.

Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery Show all 10 1 /10 Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery Vanellope was transferred to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit where she will stay for several weeks, while she recovers PA Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery Doctors recommended a termination to Vanellope’s parents because her chances of survival were so low University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust/PA Wire Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery The baby was immediately wrapped in a sterile plastic bag after she was born PA Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery The infant was born with an incredibly rare condition, Ectopia cordis, in which the heart grows on the outside of the body PA Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery Surgeons said the baby’s hope of survival were less than 10 per cent University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust/PA Wire Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery Surgeons had to move Vanellope's heart, as well as part of her stomach, into her chest PA Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery Surgeons created a mesh which protected the heart as she did not have ribs or a sternum PA Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery As her organs fight for space inside her chest, Vanellope is still attached to a ventilation machine PA Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery Naomi Findlay and Dean Wilkins with their daughter PA Baby born with heart outside of body survives surgery Vanellope Hope Wilkins may now be the first successfully treated case of ectopia cordis in the UK PA

Her donor heart was removed in 2006 when her original organ returned to full strength.