Kyrgyzstan woman gets new life with ‘auto liver transplant’ in Delhi hospital

A 35-year-old woman from Kyrgyzstan infected with a rare liver disease got a fresh lease of life getting an ‘auto liver transplant’ at a leading private hospital here, doctors said on Wednesday.
In a statement, the hospital claimed that this procedure was done for the “first time in north India.” In an auto liver transplant, the liver is removed from the body and kept in a preservative solution, after which the diseased part of the liver is removed, damaged veins are reconstructed or replaced with artificial veins, and finally the liver is re-implanted in the body.
The Kyrgyz national, who was suffering from abdominal pain for the past three months, underwent the transplant at Fortis Escorts hospital recently, the hospital said.
A team of doctors led by Dr Vivek Vij, chairman, liver transplant at the hospital, performed the “complex transplant” in an eight-hour-long operation, the statement said.
“During the surgery, we removed the damaged part of the liver and successfully replaced it with a normal part of the liver. Postoperatively, the patient had a fast recovery and was discharged on the eighth day of the surgery in a stable condition without any immunosuppressant medicines which is usually required after organ transplantation,” Vij said in the statement.
The removal of the diseased part was quite challenging as the liver was stuck with surrounding vital structures and there was a risk of injury to vital organs along with other complications and bleeding, he said.