CM congratulates SSKM doctors for conducting 1st hand transplant in Bengal

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has congratulated the team of doctors who have carried out the city’s maiden hand-transplant surgery at the SSKM Hospital.

This was Bengal’s 10th deceased organ donation of the year and the first hand transplant in eastern India.

“I congratulate our government doctors and all health care workers for the commendable and path-breaking both- hand transplant surgery at the SSKM hospital. You make us proud indeed by such wonderful initiatives. Kudos!” Banerjee tweeted on Sunday. SSKM Hospitals is among the few medical institutions in the country that has successfully performed hand transplants. The country has very few hand transplant centres. It was learnt that about 30 hand transplant surgeries have so far been conducted in India. It took around seven months for the SSKM to find a matching donor.

Haripada Rana (43) was declared brain dead at the trauma care centre of the SSKM. He had met with a road accident when he sustained severe injuries. After being informed the family members of the victim consented to donate organs. The doctors had successfully retrieved the organs and transplanted them in other patients who were requiring them for a long time.

A 27- year-old youth underwent hand-transplant surgery at the SSKM. He received two hands from the donor. The recipient had lost both arms from the elbow downwards after an electrical burn. He was one among eight potential recipients that SSKM had listed for transplant. SSKM got a hand-transplant licence in December last year following which it was taking all preparations to undertake a hand transplant.

SSKM formed a team of around 25 doctors, including plastic and orthopaedic surgeons and anaesthetists for carrying out the transplants. The team of doctors successfully transplanted the organs on various patients at the SSKM. The heart was given to a private hospital in Howrah.

Three doctors at SSKM also transplanted the two kidneys of the donor into a 15-year-old boy and a 37-year-old man respectively while the liver was given to a 56-year-old man at the institute’s School of Digestive and Liver Diseases. The heart recipient, a 56-year-old, had undergone a bypass surgery in 2014 in a different hospital.

The doctors also attached artificial hands to the deceased donor before handing his body over to the family for cremation.