New Delhi, May 15 (UNI) For the first time in India, hepatectomy was performed laparoscopically on a liver transplant donor which so far has been done in traditional open surgery.
Hepatectomy is the surgical resection, which is removal of all or part, of the liver.
The 23-year-old Iraqi mother of two, donated her liver to her two-and-a-half-year old son ailing from 'glycogen storage disease', which is pre-cursor to advanced liver disease and liver cirrhosis.
Ali Baha Hussain was weak and his growth was severely stunted. It was a matter of time before his condition deteriorated and then his mother stepped forward to bail him out.
In a press conference here on Tuesday, Dr Vivek Vij, Director-Liver Transplant at Fortis Healthcare and his team and donor-mother was present with her receptor son. Dr Vij said the Fortis Memorial Research institute conducted the 10-hour surgery on April 27 and the mother, who has had two Caesareans done earlier, was discharged in a week.
Removing kidney laparoscopically is much simpler than with liver, Dr Vij said, adding that using minimal invasive surgical techniques to conduct this surgery posed several technical difficulties in transplant.
The technological transition from the traditional liver transplantation to totally laparoscopy donor hepatectomy has multi-fold benefits including less pain, less morbidity and complications, quicker recovery, very attractive cosmetically and greater psycho-social acceptance, especially for young donors.
In a routine surgery on the donor, 15-20 cm incision is made and the pain may persist for 2-3 years, he said. Hepatectomy performed laparoscopically on liver transplant donor costs only Rs 1-2 lakh more
than the traditional open surgery.
'This is the first left lateral donor hepatectomy in India which is technically very demanding and is offered by only 2-3 centres in the world. Its safety has been demonstrated in publications,' he said. The surgery on the liver recipient is traditional open one.
As many as 250 transplants take place in the Fortis, and they plan to do 50-100 laparoscopically every year, Dr Vij told UNI.
UNI RSA SHK 1535