To mark the successful completion of 25 paediatric liver transplants at subsidised costs, doctors at Apollo Hospitals on Saturday celebrated with their patients.
The paediatric liver transplant programme at the hospital, which took-off two years ago, caters to children with end-stage liver diseases that cannot be treated with medicines. All the transplants have been carried out with the help of crowd-funding, with a success rate of over 90%.
While speaking about the various cases the team handled, doctors said there were still several misconceptions among people about liver diseases and organ donation. “In liver transplant surgery, a diseased liver is replaced with a healthy liver from a donor. It is advised for children with serious health disorders who will not be able to survive without a new liver. Since the liver is the only organ in the human body that can regenerate lost or damaged tissue, donors can live healthy lives with whatever is left of their liver, as it will grow back to normal size after the surgery. Meanwhile, the transplanted part received by the child also grows to normal size in a few weeks,” Dr. Darius F. Mirza, consultant, HPB and Liver Transplant Surgery at the hospital said.
Dr. Mirza said on an average only 1,900 liver transplants take place in India per year while the demand is 30,000 to 40,000. “80% of liver donors in India are living donors while abroad 80% are cadaver donors. This speaks about the awareness about organ donation in our country as compared to developed ones,” Dr. Vijay Yewale, HOD, Paediatrics, said.
Dr. Aabha Nagral, consultant, Hepatology (Adult and Paediatrics), spoke on the common indications for a paediatric liver transplant. She said, “The most common indication for a liver transplant is biliary atresia, a rare disease of the liver and bile ducts that occurs in infants and results in blockage of the bile flow from the liver to the gallbladder, causing damage to the liver cells. Other causes of childhood acute and chronic liver failure include inherited liver diseases.” While conducting a transplant in a paediatric patient, factors such as the age, weight, the underlying disease, and medical and surgical history is important.
For the family of nine-year-old Rajnandani Kamble from Kolhapur, years of struggle are coming to an end. “We got to know she needed a transplant when she was four-and-a-half months old. She was on and off hospital beds for eight years of her life till our paediatrician found the hospital to get her transplant done last year. She is in Class IV now but has hardly attended school this year because of the surgery, and then the floods,” her mother Arti, who is also her donor, said.
Kamothe resident Bhavana Sardesai lost three kids in a span of 10 years due to liver illness. However, her 10-year-old son, who underwent the surgery at Apollo two years back, is now leading a normal life. “I lost three children within a week of their birth. During my fourth pregnancy, we learnt that this baby had a metabolic disorder, which was genetic. Knowing the complications, we took the risk and for seven years had lost our sleep. He could not digest proteins, so we had to be very careful with his diet. If his ammonia levels went up, he would go into coma. We had to rush him to hospital within 15 minutes. Thus, we shifted close to hospital. Now that he is living a normal life, we are glad we went ahead with the pregnancy,” said Ms. Sardesai, who donated a part of her liver to her son Mayuresh.
Of the patients, the youngest to undergo a transplant was four months old.
