Hyderabad hospital creates history with zero blood transfusion liver transplant

Hyderabad: A city hospital successfully performed a complex liver transplant on a 49-year-old man from Durg, Chhattisgarh, with zero blood transfusion. The terminal liver disease patient was suffering from hepatocellular carcinoma, a cancer of the liver caused by liver cirrhosis or Hepatitis 'B' or 'C' infections.

The team of Kamineni Hospitals led by Dr. Rajashekar Perumalla, Hepato biliary and liver transplant specialist, performed the transplant with intraoperative blood loss of less than 500 ml while not transfusing any blood. The patient has since recovered and is set for discharge, the hospital said on Monday.

The patient had approached the hospitals for a second opinion with complaints of weight and appetite loss. The man was suffering from Hepatitis 'B'-related chronic liver disease, liver cirrhosis with portal hypertension for almost two years. As there was no scope for a living related donor liver transplantation with none of his relatives being from his blood group 'O+', he was registered under the state government's Jeevandan programme and had to wait for a month to find a suitable cadaver liver. The cadaver organ was donated by the family of a 30-year-old male coal cutter from Singareni Collieries who had died in a road accident.

The patient underwent deceased donor liver transplantation on 14 July. The team at Kamineni Hospitals completed the marathon surgery spread over eight hours successfully. The hospital, in a statement, said, "It was a breakthrough procedure in medical annals, considering there being no need for blood transfusion and further limiting the intraoperative blood loss to less than 500ml."

It further said that the patient's post-operative recovery created another landmark with there being no need for ventilator support. Normally, liver transplant patients are on ventilators for at least two days to a week.

Dr. Perumalla who led the team said changing lifestyles coupled with several patients suffering from liver complications at a young age make liver transplantation a necessity. "However, liver transplantation is considered to be the most complicated of all transplants with high mortality rates. Our initiative to minimize blood loss and preserve the organ to the extent possible, opens new vistas in the quest to make liver transplantation safer and common," he added.