HYDERABAD: Doctors at the Osmania General Hospital (OGH) here performed a first-of-its-kind transplantation of liver in the country on a patient to treat a rare disease effecting blood vessels Chronic Budd-Chiari Syndrome. It is the second such transplant carried out in the world, they said.
The 10-hour long operation was performed on Naga Raju (24), a security guard from Khammam. The patient is recovering and doctors said that he can start working in a few months. The transplant involves surgically removing the patient’s liver and re-implanting it.
Naga Raju was suffering from the ailment right from his birth. He knocked on the doors of all major hospitals but they said the surgery would cost around `30 lakh.Naga Raju chanced upon news reports on first liver transplantation performed at Osmania General Hospital, free of cost.
With the news stories in hand, he approached OGH. ‘’We waited for two-months for a liver which can be transplanted on him. As the wait was long, we had to think of alternatives,” Dr Madhusudhan, head of surgical gastroenterology at OGH, told newsmen here on Thursday. A liver can survive without blood for an hour. Since the organ had to be kept out for four hours, they preserved it in cold HTK organ preservative solution.
The blocked blood vessels were removed and reconstructed with artificial grafts, which helps in smooth flow of blood. Thus, the problem was solved.
During the surgery, blood supply to abdomen was stopped. Blood supply from lower to upper portion of the body was maintained by connecting blood vessel in groin to a vein in neck, said Dr R Raghu, assistant professor at OGH.