The Hindu Business Line : A life-saving operation indeed

AFTER a 11-hour gruelling surgery which includes a fretful cardiac arrest, Pranali Bhat, the four-and-half-year-old kid from Ahmedabad suffering from an "end-stage liver disease", has literally got a rebirth - from her own mother! The girl partook a slice of her mother's liver on June 4 at the Global Hospitals in the city.

Dakshina Bhat, the 39-year-old physics lecturer at R.G. Shah College in Ahmedabad, however, was modest. "I did no great thing. My daughter is a lively kid all through," Dakshina told newspersons here today.

For the first time in Andhra Pradesh, a team headed by Dr Mohammed Rela of the London-based King's College Hospital, conducted the adult-to-child liver transplantation on Pranali.

Addressing a news conference here today, Dr Ravindranath, Managing Director of Global Hospitals, said the girl had been suffering from recurrent attacks of jaundice since she was two-and-half-years-old. It was found that she had been suffering from a chronic liver disease, which resulted in cirrhosis of the liver and ascites (accumulation of fluid in the abdomen). "Medical opinion suggested that she needed to go for liver transplantation," she said.

According to Dr Ramesh Kancherla, a paediatric liver specialist the child had been suffering from an autoimmune disorder (the immune system overreacts and damages the liver). "The end-stage disease would not give her not more than six months life," he said.

Now that she underwent the transplantation, the child is doing well. "She will have a normal life and can go to school in three months," he said, adding that she needed to be in medical supervision.

Dr Rela, an expert in liver transplantations, said the children, who are required to undergo a liver transplantation, had an advantage because they needed a smaller chunk of liver. "They just need 300 grams of liver. Thereafter, it grows faster in children as they grow. But, then, it is technically challenging, too, because they have thinner veins," he said.

"In Pranali's instance, it was still complicated as she had developed a cardiac problem," Dr Rela, who holds a Guinness Book record for performing a liver transplantation on a five-day-old baby in 1998, said.

"Pranali is doing well," he said and hoped that she would be back home in a week.

According to him, liver has an excellent capacity to regenerate. It regenerates to almost 90 per cent of its original size within a span of two to three weeks.

Dr Rela's team also carried out the cadaveric liver transplantation on Kailash Nath Wahal recently at the Global Hospital.

Dr Rela, who is instrumental in conducting over 750 transplantations so far, said there was a big improvement in awareness in India with regard to liver transplantations.

Dr Ravindranath said the hospital has a good success rate, with four of the five transplantations conducted so far were successful.

The transplantation costs in the range of Rs 12-15 lakh, "if there are no other complications or illnesses".

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