Except the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital, no other government hospital in the State is performing liver transplants. The majority of cadaveric livers therefore goes to patients in private hospitals every year.
The city’s largest government hospital, Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH), is yet to perform liver transplants. In fact, liver transplants are yet to take off at the Government Rajaji Hospital, Madurai that had obtained license to perform the transplants under the deceased donor programme, officials of the Health Department said.
Data available on the website of the Transplant Authority of Tamil Nadu is proof of this. In 2016, out of the 178 liver transplants performed in the State, 168 were in private hospitals. The following year, the government sector accounted only for nine transplants of the total of 144. In 2018, only five were performed in the government sector as against 112 in the private sector.
In 2014, a government order was issued giving the nod for establishing a liver transplant unit at RGGGH under the departments of Hepatology and Surgical Gastroenterology. This came after considering the huge inflow of patients coming with chronic liver diseases and requiring liver transplantation. An outpatient liver transplant unit was started soon but transplants did not materialise. “RGGGH has infrastructure and team in place, and there is no dearth of patients requiring liver transplants. But liver transplants have not taken off due to administrative reasons,” a senior doctor said.
Only the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital has been performing liver transplants under the deceased donor programme since 2009. “Liver transplants need dedicated team work. We need a hepatologist, surgeon, intensivist and pathologist. Training is a key component to take liver transplants forward,” a senior surgeon in the government sector said. He added that both RGGGH and Stanley Hospital do not perform living donor liver transplants.
According to data, Stanley Hospital has performed one liver transplant since the beginning of this year, while it performed five last year. As of now, 21 patients are on the waiting list for liver transplant. Until recently, it had an agreement with a private hospital to perform liver transplants. But that no longer exists and the team at Stanley has decided to perform surgeries on their own, official sources said.
The Government Rajaji Hospital, Madurai, obtained license for liver transplants in 2018 but has not done a single case till now, a Health Department official said. “Even the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital is doing very few cases. In such a situation, a huge chunk of liver from brain dead donors goes to private hospitals. Both cadaveric and living donor liver transplants are performed predominantly by private hospitals,” the official said.
A senior hospital authority said RGGGH would start to perform liver transplants once the new Hepatology Block is inaugurated.
