CHENNAI: Just when his surgeons began to believe that the worst was over after transplanting a cadaver liver into his body, Mandolin U Srinivas shocked his medical team and music lovers everywhere. The child prodigy-turned-maestro developed a secondary lung infection that “battered” his body, according to a doctor, and claimed his life early on Friday morning.
An artiste whose schedule is usually packed with concerts across continents, Srinivas had reportedly been ailing for some time before the disease struck hard. On September 3, his condition worsened rapidly and he was rushed to the Apollo Hospital here with what doctors diagnosed, albeit with a deepening sense of gloom, as a critically sick condition with “fulminant liver failure, viral bilateral pneumonia and kidney failure”. At 45, cirrhosis and liver trouble are not common problems for a man with his lifestyle, but his body willed otherwise. “After initial stabilisation in the ICU with antibiotics and dialysis, his condition worsened and we had to put him on ventilator,” said hospital sources.
Srinivas needed a new liver and given the extraneous circumstances, an appeal was made to the Tamil Nadu Organ Sharing network — bumping him up the list as a supra-urgent candidate. “Given his condition, it was extremely risky to consider a transplant, but it is the last option in such cases,” said a doctor. Organs from a techie, who was declared brain dead six days ago, proved to be a match for him and surgeons rushed to carry out the transplant. Miraculously, the surgery was uneventful — a case where no news was good news. “The liver function began to improve and he was picking up,” said a source. The administration of immuno-suppressants after the transplant may have left him vulnerable, but that was a decision the team could not avoid. Sadly, five days after the transplant, Srinivas developed a secondary lung infection that spread to his major organs. “His lungs and heart went into shock and he quickly deteriorated and died,” the source added.
And then the mandolin fell silent.