Rare surgery gives man new lease of life

In a rare and complex surgery, doctors at a city hospital created a liver in the body of a 46-year-old man by joining two liver lobes donated by two of his family members.

Sameer Mitra from West Bengal had been suffering from cryptogenic cirrhosis for three years and it had reached an advanced stage. He had visited several hospitals and was advised a liver transplant, but could not do so due to <g data-gr-id="26">unavailability</g> of a donor.

Mitra’s weight, 93kg, made the situation even more complex. “Since he was overweight, a donor in his family could not be found as they didn’t match Mitra’s liver type weight-wise,” said Dr Naimish Mehta, senior liver transplant consultant at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

The liver of a normal person weighs 2 per cent of the body weight and any individual undergoing a transplant requires a liver, which weighs a minimum 0.8 per cent of his total body weight. “In this case, the patient required 730 grams of liver,” he said.

The patient’s wife and children, who matched him weight-wise, had different blood groups, making them ineligible to donate. “The blood group of his brother-in-law’s wife was the same as <g data-gr-id="31">his</g> but she weighed only 45 kg and the right half of her liver only 540 grams,” he said. 

“We took out her right lobe and extracted around 220 gm from the left lateral segment of <g data-gr-id="30">the his</g> brother-in-law’s liver and joined the two portions inside Mitra’s body, using his veins. This way it weighed 760 grams,” Dr Mehta said, adding “taking a smaller part of the brother-in-law’s liver minimised the risk.” 

The <g data-gr-id="28">dual lobe</g> liver transplant was carried out on August 29 and Mitra was discharged three weeks after the operation and is doing fine.