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Pune’s first transplant swap: Two women donate part of liver to each-other’s husband, gives new lease of life
The city’s first two-way transplant swap was performed by Sahyadri Super Speciality Hospital, Deccan Gymkhana on March 13
A rare liver swap transplant conducted in a Pune hospital helped save lives of two relatives – Ajit (name changed), a teacher from Buldhana and Amar (name changed), a businessman from Ahmednagar, who didn’t know that they had a shared destiny.
The city’s first two-way transplant swap was performed by Sahyadri Super Speciality Hospital, Deccan Gymkhana on March 13. The 20-hour long procedure was performed by a medical team of 25 members, including 11 doctors and other staff. Dr Bipin Vibhute, head of Liver and Multi-organ Transplant department at Sahyadri Hospitals, led the swap liver transplant, said officials in a press conference conducted in Pune on Thursday.
A swap transplant is one where a patient’s relative donates his or her organs (one kidney or part of liver) to another patient. In return, the latter patient’s relative will donate their organ to first patient. A liver swap is rare because patients don’t survive for long. In this case, both patients were suffering from liver cirrhosis.
As per the doctors, although each donor was related to one of the recipients, their livers were not compatible. Dr Vibhute decided to perform a two-way transplant wherein, Swara (name changed), the wife of Amar donated her liver to Ajit and Geeta (name changed),wife of Ajit donated her liver to Amar.
Dr Vibhute said, “Swap transplants have taken place in prominent cities like Mumbai and Delhi before, but the recent one in Pune was a first of its kind operation. Such exchanges prove to be life-saving for recipients whose relatives are medically fit but cannot donate due to mismatched blood group or liver size. The two transplants were carried out concurrently by performing surgeries on two donors and two recipients. A medical team of 25 members, including 11 doctors and other staff collaborated in four operating rooms for over 20 hours to accomplish this herculean task.”
Dr Vibhute emphasised the significant role that patient counselling plays prior to such procedures. The major challenge witnessed was performing all four surgeries simultaneously in four operating rooms - right from administering anaesthesia to completing the transplant.
