25/08/2015
Liver Transplant
The transplantation of solid human organs was undoubtedly one of the greatest medical breakthroughs of this century. The first successful liver transplant in India was performed on two year old Sanjay Kandaswamy at the Indraprastha Apollo in Delhi over a dozen years ago. But even today, transplant of human organs in India has not taken off in the way it should as there is a serious shortage of donors.
But some innovative ideas have emerged. In April 2011, doctors at Medanta’s Institute of Liver Transplantation did what seemed impossible. They transplanted the left side of a live upside down so that it could fit and replace the right side of the patient's liver. The operation, a first in India, gave a new hope to Y.P. Singh, a banker from Bihar in his late fifties. Singh was suffering from terminal liver failure and doctors feared he would not survive beyond a few weeks. A search for a donor proved futile. So, Preeti, his daughter and Atul, his son, decided to donate their liver as they had matching blood groups.
Normally, the donor donates his right lobe which is about 65 per cent of the whole liver as that is what is required to make it work. However, being children both had small livers. Therefore, chief surgeon, Dr. A.S. Soin chose to perform a “dual left lobe transplant”, where each donor had to donate only about 35% of their liver and these were transplanted into the recipient. As the two children only donated a small part of their liver, they were safe.
Dr. Soin led a team of 40 surgeons, anesthetists and operation theatre staff for the complicated procedure that took 16 hours and was conducted simultaneously in three operation theatres. Hepatologist Dr. S. Saigal, Surgeons, Dr. R. Kakodkar and Dr. R. Mohanka and Anesthetist Dr. V. Vohra were part of the team that operated upon Singh. But, they first rehearsed it under simulated conditions on the CT scan console. It was a proud moment for doctors in India when they pulled it off successfully.
India throws up surprises all the time. It is an amazing country. It does not have the best medical research facilities in the world. The medical fraternity in fact, struggle with the basics in numerous government hospitals that await finance for expansion plans. With exploding populations, hospital…