Bhubaneswar: After a long wait of over a decade, SCB Medical College and Hospital (SCBMCH) at Cuttack conducted liver transplantation on a patient with end-stage liver disease and became the first government hospital in Odisha to perform the highly complex surgical procedure.
Sources said a 35-year-old woman donated 60 per cent of her liver to her middle-aged husband as transplantation was the only option left for the patient.
After conducting the ten-hour long procedure on Wednesday, the premier medical institution became the first government health facility to start liver transplantation in the state. The surgery was conducted on a 45-year-old patient by a joint team of 30 medical experts from SCB MCH and Asian Institute of Gastroenterology (AIG), Hyderabad led by renowned liver transplant surgeon Dr P Balachandran Menon.
The liver cirrhosis patient from Tigiria in Cuttack district was under treatment for the last four years. He was among the first few in the state’s transplant waiting list. The condition of both the donor and the recipient is stable after the procedure. They will be under close observation for at least a month.
Organ removal and subsequent transplantation were initiated after approval from the authorisation board headed by SCB MCH medical superintendent Dr Sudhanshu Sekhar Mishra. The organ removal process began at 7.30 am and transplantation was over by 5.30 pm. A nine-member team from AIG had reached Cuttack to train the SCB surgeons and other health staff on the procedure.
Describing the successful conduct of the procedure as a major achievement for the state health sector in live organ donation and transplantation, Dr Mishra said the entire procedure was carried out free of cost. Though other live organ transplants like kidney have earlier been carried out successfully by government hospitals in the state, liver transplantation was conducted for the first time.
Expressing the hope that this would pave way for planned liver transplants further, he said there are several patients seeking liver transplant. The government will have to take a decision whether it would be free for all or affordable, and fix criteria for selection of cases as the procedure involves huge logistics cost and manpower.
The family of the patient expressed gratitude to SCB since it would have been impossible for them to get the transplant at corporate hospitals which charge anything between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 30 lakh.
Notably, the state government had in 2013 announced plan to set up a liver transplant unit at SCBMCH and sanctioned Rs 22 crore a year after the kidney transplant unit started functioning. It was delayed due to several factors, including vacancies in key posts.
SCBMCH was also the first public hospital in Odisha to conduct kidney transplantation 12 years ago.
