Chennai : The Chennai-based super-speciality hospital MGM Healthcare today announced that it achieved a rare feat by successfully performing a living donor liver transplant on a 45- year-old patient overcoming the challenge of blood group incompatibility.
The 12hr long procedure was led by Dr Thiagarajan Srinivasan and his team of transplant specialists including Dr Karthik Mathivanan and Lead anaesthetists Dr Dinesh and Dr Nivash. Though ABO incompatibility between a donor and a recipient is generally considered a barrier to kidney or liver transplant, the doctors at MGM Healthcare employed a new technology in the form of a highly selective blood group antibody absorption device (glycosorb) in a series of four patients.
The patient Unnikrishnan from Kerala had developed chronic liver failure and was waiting for a liver transplant for more than three years after visiting several hospitals in India. With a huge demand supply mismatch Unnikrishnan was not able to get a suitable cadaveric organ and further to his dismay there was no blood group compatible living donor in his family.
Talking to reporters here, Dr Thiagarajan Srinivasan said this opens hope for the many who have been waiting for transplants and is also paving way for faster recovery. Explaining the procedure, Dr Thiagarajan said “first we stop the production of new blood group antibodies by rituximab and removal of existing blood group antibodies with the glycosorb filter and using specialized induction agent (basiliximab) and living donor liver transplant is performed with a blood group incompatible donor and successfully followed up lifelong.”
Dr Karthik Mathivanan, Senior Consultant and Associate Director Institute of Liver Transplant & HPB Surgery said liver transplantation is the best and only option for a patient who is diagnosed with either end-stage liver cirrhosis or cancer. Unfortunately, there is a huge divide between the demand for donor liver and liver donation so we face a shortage of organs. Yet, with advancements in the field, transplantation using ABO-incompatible (ABOi) grafts – is an alternate strategy for increasing donor availability”, he said.
At MGM Healthcare, the Institute of Liver diseases, Transplant and HPB Team has so far performed 4 ABOi Liver transplants successfully using the new technology within one year”, he said.