SSKM achieves rare feat with back-to-back liver transplants

Kolkata: With two back-to-back liver transplant surgeries in a span of 48 hours, the liver transplant unit at the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research (IPGMER) has achieved a feat. This is probably the only government facility in the country where such transplant surgeries have been performed on two consecutive days.
The unit which is part of the School of Digestive and Liver Diseases (SDLD) at IPGMER on Saturday transplanted a deceased donor liver on a man.Another deceased donor transplant successfully followed on Sunday. Both recipients are recuperating well. “Of all the procedures, transplanting liver is the most complex one which involves challenging intricacies. The whole procedure takes about 10 to 12 hours. Conducting two back-to-back surgeries is quite an achievement,” said Abhijit Chowdhury hepatology head.
The organ retrieval and transplants teams just managed to get some rest in between the two procedures. The team is geared up for another transplant as and when it gets an organ that matches one of the nearly 50 end-stage liver failure patients.
IPGMER embarked on its liver transplant journey on April 24 in 2009 when a seven-month-old boy underwent the procedure. This was done for the first time by any hospital in the eastern region.
“So far we have conducted 31 liver transplant surgeries out of which 19 are deceased donor transplants and the rest living donor. The last five have been done independently by our team,” said gastroenterologist Gopal Krishna Dhali who heads SDLD.
Besides IPGMER, currently only a handful of government sector hospitals are conducting liver transplant surgery on a regular basis in India. This includes King Gorge Medical College Lucknow and Stanley Medical College Chennai.
SDLD started its liver transplant programme with hand-holding from transplant surgeon Subhas Gupta, who is based in Delhi. Currently the unit runs a transplant clinic once a week for post-transplant patients, where they also attend to prospective transplant patients.
“We faced jolts in the initial phase but now we are matured as a transplant unit, with tremendous support from Dr Subhas Gupta. Organ donation picking up pace should enable the team to conduct more surgeries. The government facilities makes such expensive procedures accessible to people,” added Chowdhury.
The city now has at least four hospitals with liver transplant licence apart from IPGMER. However, the cost of the procedure in private hospitals could be around 30 lakhs, where as at IPGMER it is done for free.