Chennai:David Marshall (54), who was diagnosed with liver failure and liver cancer has been successfully treated with ABO-incompatible liver transplantation by Prof Mohamed Rela and his team from Dr Rela Institute at Kumaran Hospitals recently.
Addressing mediapersons here Wednesday, liver transplant surgeon Prof Mohamed Rela said, “Since the patient was very ill, a unique solution was put forth in the case of David Marshall, where his son, whose blood group did not match his father’s, agreed to donate his liver. After a detailed team discussion in the best interest of the patient it was decided to go ahead with liver transplantation after ‘desensitisation’ of the recipient blood by removing antibodies that can cause severe rejection. This is called ABO incompatible liver transplantation, a lifesaving surgery.’
Prof Mohamed Rela said, ‘Generally people waiting for a cadaver liver transplant don’t survive the wait because finding a matching donor could take time. There were about 270 liver transplants done last year out of which about 200 of them were from the living donors. However, most often the patients find themselves in a predicament of an unmatched living related donor and here the ABO incompatible transplantation comes as a solution to this problem. Though the operation is not first of its kind, there is a necessity to make people aware about it.’
‘ABO incompatible transplantation is a unique procedure of its kind where the patient receive special medication two weeks before the transplantation and a procedure called plasmapheresis to minimise the cells that produce specific antibodies and remove the existing antibodies,’ he said.
David Marshall thanked the doctors and said, ‘I certainly feel healthy just the same way I used to be preceding the unfortunate ordeal of cirrhosis and liver cancer’.
Caption: David Marshall and his son with Prof Mohamed Rela, Kumaran Hospitals executive director, Dr S P Shivakumar and liver transplant physician (hepatologist) Dr Dinesh Jothimani at a press meet in Chennai Wednesday.