HYDERABAD: In a rare instance, a team of four surgeons at KIMS Hospitals here successfully performed simultaneous liver and kidney (SLK) transplant in a woman patient. Moreover, the liver, which usually weighs less than 1.5 kg, had grown epithelial cells due to a rare genetic disorder called Polycystic Liver Disease (PLD) and weighed 12 kg in this case.
The marathon operation, lasting nearly 14 hours, was successfully carried out by liver transplant surgeons including Dr Ravichand Siddachari, consultant and chief, Liver Transplant and HPB Surgery. A 50-year-old housewife, Usha Agarwal from Siliguri in West Bengal, had been unable to walk with a heavy liver and collection of water (ascites) in her stomach since 2019. She was suffering from PLD as well as Polycystic Kidney disease. It is a hereditary condition caused due to mutations in genes and cysts (fluid-filled cavities).
“The patients do not develop any symptoms till they are in their 30s. As the cysts grow, they start experiencing the symptoms. They can grow to enormous size while the subsequent collection of water in the stomach can lead to hernia and breathing problems. Such patients may need dialysis due to decreasing kidney functionality,” Dr Siddachari said, adding that the woman had all these symptoms apart from a huge hernia, which had ruptured. The surgeons, who performed two rare transplantations last month were delighted that the patient had recovered well and had been discharged from the hospital recently.
“It was a herculean task to detach the liver from its attachments, preserving the important structures required for transplantation at the same time. The new kidney was transplanted through the same cut after creating a pouch in the abdomen,” explained Dr Uma Maheshwara Rao, consultant urologist and renal transplant surgeon.