Liver cancer patient flies from Delhi for transplant, green corridor opens

HYDERABAD: In what is seen as a first in the city’s medical history, a team of Delhi-based doctors from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital flew into the city along with an end-stage liver disease patient on Saturday to perform a transplant surgery here.

Jeevandan

, the state-run cadaver transplantation authority, allotted a liver to a 59-year-old liver cancer patient from Delhi. The liver was donated by the kin of Uppal resident and welder P Srinivas, 43, a day after he was declared brain dead at Care hospital.

Led by Dr Ushast Dhir, consultant surgeon in the department of surgical gastroenterology and liver transplantation, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi, the team of six doctors went straight to the operation theatre at

Continental Hospital

for an eight-hour-long marathon transplant surgery, which started at around 2 pm on Saturday.

Normally, the organs of a brain dead patient are flown in for transplant in a patient. But in this case, the patient himself was brought to the city by a team of doctors for transplantation.

“The Delhi-based cadaver liver recipient has been under treatment for liver cancer for the past six months. His name has already been registered with both Telangana’s Jeevandan and Delhi-based National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (entrusted with the task of allocation of cadaver livers among registered hospitals in Delhi),” said Dr Ushast Dhir, who is also a visiting consultant to Continental Hospital.

While thanking the family of the donor, Dr Ushast Dhir said that they had chosen Joint Commission International-accredited Continental Hospital to take up the transplant surgery on the patient as he listed his name here.

“The cadaver liver was allotted by Jeevandan to Continental hospital on rotation basis,” added Dr Dhir, pointing out that the Delhi-based liver cancer patient underwent treatment at SGRH with radio frequency ablation (RFA) until now.

Under this procedure, high-frequency electrical currents are passed through a needle electrode and heat is generated, which destroys cancer cells in liver.

However, Dr

G Swarnalatha

, coordinator of Jeevandan programme, told TOI that the cadaver liver went to Continental hospital by default as Care hospital could not utilise it in-house for their waitlisted patients due to unexpected non-availability of their key transplant team member.

“As per the rules for cadaver organs harvested from a brain dead patient in a hospital, they always have the first right of its utilisation in-house for their waitlisted patient,” she explained. When asked about the rules governing outside recipients taking advantage of locally harvested cadaver organs, Swarnalatha told TOI that any terminally ill patient looking for a cadaver organ can register with any number of State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (SOTTO) like Jeevandan.

“However, within a state, the potential recipient is allowed to register his or her name with only one hospital,” she added.

For the record, Jeevandan has nine approved liver transplant centres in the city and they collectively performed 96 liver transplantation surgeries in 2016 using cadaver livers.