A team of doctors at Apollo Hospitals, Ahmedabad successfully performed Gujarat’s first liver & kidney transplant from living donors on a patient from Myanmar.

A team of doctors at Apollo Hospitals, Ahmedabad gave a new lease of life to a 48-year-old Myanmar by performing a liver and kidney transplant on him in one go. The marathon surgery that went on for 17 hours was performed on May 3, 2022 and the patient was discharged from the hospital on May 18, 2022. Notably, it is first of a kind in Gujarat where two organ transplants from live donors were done on a patient on the same day.

The team of doctors who were involved in the marathon surgery include Dr Chirag Desai, GI, HPB and Liver Transplant Surgeon; Dr Neerav Goyal, Liver Transplant Surgeon, Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi, Dr Lakshman Khiria and Dr Swati Upadhyay. Liver physicians were Dr Shravan Bohra and Dr Apurva Shah. The kidney transplant team included Dr Manoj Gumber, Nephrologist and Transplant Physician and Dr Vijaya Rajkumari, Kidney Transplant Surgeon. The Anaesthesia team included Dr Ankit Chauhan and team and the ICU team was led by Dr Jay Kothari.

The patient had a history of diabetes, hypertension and Hepatitis C and was dependent on dialysis for the past three years. He approached Apollo Hospitals for treatment during a medical tourism event in Myanmar. Upon detailed evaluation, doctors found that apart from a damaged kidney, the patient was also suffering from liver cirrhosis and needed a liver transplant as well.

A double organ transplant involves three times the risk as opposed to any single organ transplant. Describing the complications of the case, Dr Desai, said, “A critical challenge was to find live organ donors for kidney and liver for the surgery. This case was the first-ever in Gujarat wherein two organs were transplanted using live donors.” “Timing and coordination between both the transplant teams was very crucial”, he added.

When it comes to any transplant surgery, monitoring the use of immunosuppression drugs is extremely vital. Explaining the significance of this process, Dr Gumber said, “Balancing the use of immunosuppression drugs during a transplant was the key to a successful surgery. If given in less than adequate amount, the organs get rejected, and any more than adequate will increase the chances of an infection in a patient. Given the risk, the multi-speciality pool of doctors at Apollo and the resources available here made this surgery possible.”

Apart from this, surgical skills, good ICU, and post-operative monitoring were factors that attributed to the success of this sensitive surgery.

Commenting on the recovery of the patient Dr Vijaya Rajkumari said, “He is eating normally. The creatinine results are normal. Post-discharge regular follow-ups, compliance with medicine and monitoring are vital for a successful transplant and the longevity of the organs.”

Mr. Neeraj Lal, Chief Operating Officer (Gujarat Region), Apollo Hospitals said, “With the decline in COVID-19 cases and as international travel opened up, many international patients are coming to Apollo Hospitals for their surgeries and treatments.”