Apollo Hospitals Chennai completes a year of the Liver Transplantation Programme

Patients come together to mark a year of the Liver Transplantation Programme at Apollo Hospitals Chennai

• Apollo Hospitals Chennai has performed the largest number of cadaver Liver Transplants in a single year as compared to any centre in the country
• Performs a Living Related Liver Transplant and saves a 24- year old mother of two.
• Launches ‘Apollo Liver Clinic’. A novel concept that offers multidisciplinary evaluation under one roof by several sub-specialists in liver medicine. Patients with all forms of liver diseases including hepatitis, & cancer involving the liver, pancreas & biliary system can benefit

The team of the Liver Transplantation Programme at Apollo Hospitals Chennai completed a year of successful cadaver and living liver transplantations. Until even a year ago, the liver transplantation procedure was not available in Chennai. A living donor transplantation procedure also had its constraints. The recent cases at Apollo Hospitals Chennai have changed the face of liver transplantation in southern India.

The success of our liver transplant programme exhibits that we are second to none. Apollo Hospitals has the largest liver transplantation programme in India. Our programme has encouraged all sections of society to come together and promote organ donation so that many more lives can be saved. We are very grateful for the progressive and supportive government policies, that help us, save lives. These patients don’t just receive an organ but a new lease of life.

In the last one-year, close to 25 liver transplants have been performed at Apollo Hospital Chennai. These life-saving procedures give hope to thousands of cases of liver failure.

We have established the most up to date infrastructure geared towards undertaking successful liver transplants, complex liver hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery. We have successfully performed cadaveric liver transplants and recently even three living donor liver transplants. Our patients speak for our work.

Given below are two noteworthy cases,

• “A 24 years old lady, a mother of two, 3 months following her last delivery, was referred from Jharkhand to Apollo Hospitals Chennai with rapidly developing jaundice & liver failure due to Hepatitis B. She was critically sick and required life support system. Only an emergency liver transplant could save her. Considering the low prospects of availability of a cadaver liver at such short notice, her brother, husband and nephew came forward to donate a part of their liver but were found unfit. Finally, the sister-in-law was found fit and willing. The challenging endeavor lasted 20 hours and soon she was on her road to recovery. The donor went home on day 8, while the recipient stayed in the hospital for 3 weeks and went home on her 25th birthday. Today Sumithra is back with her family and her two children.” This Adult to Adult Living donor liver transplant for Fulminant liver failure was the first of its type in Tamil Nadu.
• “Young Ms Yanza from Kenya, suffered from jaundice for the last several years. She was born with an inherited liver disease. Her liver was failing. There were no facilities for such a complex treatment in Kenya. She received a portion of her mother’s liver. The mother recovered within 7 days. Yanza is completely normal today and excited to go back to school with her sister.”

Liver failure is a potentially fatal condition in which the liver progressively stops performing its function resulting in episodes of jaundice, accumulation of fluid in the body, blood vomiting and confusion. Conditions such as Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C infection, excess alcohol consumption, diseases such as Primary Biliary Cirrhosis and Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis can cause this state.

A liver transplant is recommended when all other treatment options fail and then on inaction could be fatal. The purpose of the transplantation is to replace the diseased liver with a healthy liver. Ideally, after a transplant, a patient will be free from disease, and can lead a fairly normal life.

Several new initiatives by the Apollo Hospitals as well as the Tamil-Nadu state government, has increased the rate of cadaver organ donation. Last year, Apollo Hospitals Chennai performed the largest number of cadaver liver transplants by any centre in the country in any one year. The cadaver livers came from various districts of Tamil-Nadu.

Procurement of cadaveric organs and its transplantation is resource intensive, laborious and requires detailed and timely coordination among several medical and logistic departments. Recently a cadaver organ had to be retrieved from a 21-year-old donor in Nagarcoil. Since there is presently no hospital in Nagarcoil authorized to conduct organ donation, the patient was transferred to Thirunelveli. The Liver Transplantation Team from Apollo Hospitals Chennai flew to Madurai and drove an ambulance for 3 hrs to Thirunelveli and a similar journey back to complete the transplant in Chennai within 10 hours of retrieval.

The Centre for Liver Disease & Transplantation, Apollo Hospitals, Chennai is a centre for excellence in the treatment of Liver, Pancreas and biliary track disorders. Patients with hepatitis, cirrhosis and other forms of liver diseases and cancers, go through aprotracted course of disease progression thatmay involve various systems thereby requiring multidisciplinary evaluation and multi-modality treatment approach including medical optimization, surgical procedures and occasionally interventional radiology based procedures to bridge over certain crisis situations. These patients are often terminally sick. Having to go to various physician clinics, resultant-increasing costs of investigations and the frustration secondary to diverse opinions can be bewildering. Liver clinics, over and above being the ‘public face’ of the Centre for Liver Disease & Transplantation, Apollo Hospitals, Chennai, addresses these patient related issues. It aims at saving the patients’ cost, time and clinic encounters. The liver clinics aim to provide a comprehensive evaluation followed by a ‘road map’ of care that is optimally tailored to meet the individual patients’ requirements based on their disease sub-type, severity and co-morbidities.