A group of Indian and Pakistani doctors have jointly performed a complicated living donour liver transplant procedure at the Sheikh Zayed Hospital for the first time in Pakistan on Saturday.
The living donor liver transplantations ( LDLT) are “highly sensitive and complicated” surgical procedures as two lives – the donor and recipient – are at risk, doctors said.
The joint operations were done by Indian surgeon Subash Gupta, a senior transplant doctor of Apollo Hospital in Delhi, and three of his colleagues and the three-member Pakistani team of Tariq Bangash, Khawar Shahzad and Umer Ali.
“The joint venture of leading Indian and Pakistani transplant surgeons has made history by opening a new era of living-relative liver transplants in Pakistan,” Bangish said.
The first liver transplant was performed on Khanum Maula and the liver was donated by his close relative Irshad Bibi while the second surgery was conducted on 45-year-old Abida Parveen and the liver was donated by her 19-year-old son. It took 12 hours for the surgeons to complete each sensitive procedure. Both recipients were brought to Shaikh Zayed Hospital with complete liver failures.
The Indian doctors visited Pakistan to perform the transplants at the request of the Pakistani surgeons. Before their arrival, surgeons at Shaikh Zayed Hospital finalised arrangements for the sensitive operations and prepared the donors and recipients. The condition of all recipients and donors was stable and they were kept under observation in intensive care for 24 hours. Consultants were put on high alert for post-operative care of the patients for 24 hours, a highly sensitive period for all who undergo hours-long surgeries.
SZH chairman told the reporters that more than 200 patients had applied for transplants in the future and requested the citizens to encourage philanthropy and organ donation in the society.