AIIMS plans to start live-donor liver transplants; constitutes panel

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi is planning to start live-donor liver transplants. The institute has also constituted an eight-member committee which is headed by Dr Pranjal Modi who is a Vice-Chancellor of Gujarat University of Transplantation Sciences to consider several options.

The committee constituted by the AIIMS administration also includes institute director Dr M Srinivas and the heads of the departments of anesthesia, gastroenterology, surgery, and cardiac surgery. Dr Pranjal Modi is also a member of the institute body and chairman of the Standing Academic Committee at AIIMS.

Presently, AIIMS Delhi is providing liver transplant services through donations from brain-dead patients after taking permission from their family members.

A living-donor liver transplant is a surgery in which a portion of the liver from a healthy living person is removed and transplanted to another person whose liver is no longer functioning properly. The point is that the donor’s remaining liver regrows and returns to its normal size, volume, and capacity within a couple of months after the surgery.

The decision to start live donor liver transplants is going to give great relief to patients who have been suffering from liver damage. In the hospital, the waiting list for those who require liver transplants is quite long. Also, the number of cadaver donor liver transplants is also rare due to the low rate of organ donation from brain-dead individuals.

Presently, live-donor liver transplants are higher in number and in private hospitals where the cost of such a transplant is between Rs 22 to 25 lakh.