After 15-hr-long surgery, child lives on post liver transplant

In a first of its kind, a liver transplant surgery was successfully conducted on an infant child with serious physical disabilities. This is the first successful pediatric liver transplant on a physically-challenged child in India.

Ananya (name changed) was born to a Delhi couple and suffered brain haemorrhage at the tender age of three months. As a result, she started having serious effects on her liver and was partially paralysed.

Her parents had lost all hopes of her survival when she was brought to Ganga Ram hospital, when she was just four months old. The doctors at the hospital told them that liver transplant was the only option to save her life but it could have serious implications on the child.

According to Dr Nishant Wadhwa, Pediatric Hepatologist and liver transplant physician at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital told Millennium Post: ‘This was one of the most challenging cases I have seen in the last 10 years. Only liver transplant could have saved the life of the child but there was a high possibility that the physical-disability would continue even after a successful transplant.’

Despite the odds, the parents decided to go for the transplant and the mother donated a part of her liver to her child.

‘The biggest challenge before the team led by Dr Naimish Mehta was to administer anesthesia for 15-hour-long surgery and ensure that there was minimal adverse affect on the already compromised brain-blood supply’, informed Wadhwa. Hence, on 7 March, a team of doctors successfully performed the first pediatric liver transplant on a physically-challenged child in India.

‘It was a 15-hour marathon surgery. It was essential that the child was removed from the ventilator support as soon as possible for speedy recovery of the brain. Both the mother and child were discharged from the hospital after 15 days,’ Wadhwa added. Today, three months after the surgery the child is healthy and can walk freely without any support. Her health is expected to get better in future.

Sukalyan Banerjee, father of the child expressed his gratitude to the team of doctors. ‘We had seriously lost all hopes. But the hard work put in by the doctors is really commendable. We don’t know how to thank them,’ said Sukalyan.