Odisha woman plays donor in SCB’s first liver transplant

Bhubaneswar: After a long wait of over a decade, the first complex liver transplant was performed on a patient with end-stage liver disease at the SCB Medical College and Hospital (MCH) in Cuttack on Wednesday.

The 35-year-old wife of a middle-aged patient donated 60 percent of her liver to her husband as transplant was the only option left.
With this, the premier medical institute of Odisha became the first government health facility to start liver transplant in the state. It was also the first public hospital to perform kidney transplantation, 12 years ago. The 10-hour long procedure was conducted on the 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 Tigiriya was undergoing treatment for the last four years.
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The patient was among the first few people on the state’s transplant waiting list, hospital sources said. Both the donor and recipient are stable after the vital procedure and will be closely monitored for the next one month.
After approval from the authorization board headed by SCB MCH Medical Superintendent Dr. Sudhanshu Shekhar Mishra, organ extraction and subsequent transplantation began. The organ extraction process began at 7.30 am and the transplant was completed by 5.30 pm. A nine-member team from AIG had arrived to train SCB surgeons and other health workers on the procedure.
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Dr. Mishra described it as a major achievement for the state health sector in living organ donation and transplantation. Although other live organ transplants like kidneys have been successfully performed in government hospitals in the state before, liver transplant was done for the first time. He said that the entire process was done free of cost.
“This will pave the way for further planned liver transplants. There are many patients who want to undergo liver transplant. The government will have to decide whether it will be free for all or affordable, and set a criteria for selection of cases as the process involves huge logistics costs and manpower,” he said.
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The patient’s family expressed gratitude towards SCB as it would have been impossible for them to get the transplant done at corporate hospitals, which charge anything between Rs 25 lakh to Rs 30 lakh.
In 2013, the state government had announced setting up a liver transplant unit at SCB 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 positions.