On Sunday, the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital performed the first deceased donor liver transplant in almost two years since transplant services were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A team from the hospital brought the organ from Madurai by a flight and transplanted it in a 52-year-old man in an eight-hour-long surgery.
It all started during the early hours of Sunday when Jeswanth Satyanesan, director of the Institute of Surgical Gastroenterology and Liver Transplant, Stanley Hospital, received an alert regarding the donor, a 39-year-old man, at Government Rajaji Hospital (GRH), Madurai. In the next few hours, a team was rushed to Madurai by flight and put in place arrangements to bring the liver.
Dr. Jeswanth and his colleague reached Madurai by 7.35 a.m. The family of the donor, who was injured in a road accident and declared brain-dead, came forward to donate his liver and kidneys. Officials of the Transplant Authority of Tamil Nadu said the liver was allotted to the Government Stanley Hospital in Chennai while one kidney was allotted to Government Rajaji Hospital and another to a hospital in Tiruchi. The corneas were allotted to the Government Rajaji Hospital.
“The organ retrieval began at 10.30 a.m. We left Madurai by a 1.30 p.m. flight, which was delayed by nearly 20 minutes and reached Chennai by 3 p.m. We had two ambulances waiting at the airport and reached Stanley Hospital in 20 minutes,” Dr. Jeswanth said.
An advanced life support 108 ambulance transported the organ from the Chennai airport to Stanley Hospital in coordination with the Chennai traffic police by creating a green corridor, a press release said. A team of Rela Hospital, which has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Health Department to perform liver transplants, coordinated with the team from Stanley Hospital.
The transplantation began at around 3.30 p.m. to 4 p.m. and ended close to 12.30 a.m. on Monday. The patient was suffering from end stage liver failure and was waiting for a liver transplant for at least two years, the doctors said.
P. Balaji, dean, Stanley Hospital, said all COVID-19 protocols, including RT-PCR test for the patient, were followed.
With round-the-clock monitoring, the patient was shifted to the post-operative intensive care unit, extubated and was breathing in room air, the release said.
At Stanley Hospital, where a liver transplant centre has been functioning, 81 cadaveric liver transplants were performed since 2009. At present, about 40 patients with end stage liver disease were waitlisted for liver transplant, the release said.
Mala, head of anaesthesia and Revathy, head of Medical Gastroenterology along with the Department of Microbiology coordinated the effort.
