He and his team at SPS Hospitals, Ludhiana has successfully performed its first liver transplant surgery.
1. What is live donor liver transplantation?
A: Live Donor Liver Transplantation (LDLT) is a procedure in which a live donor gives a portion of his or her liver to a family member in need of a liver transplant.
2. Who is a candidate for liver transplantation?
A: Individuals who suffer from end-stage liver disease from various causes are considered for liver transplantation.
3. How is the decision made to transplant a patient liver?
A:The decision to transplant a patient liver is made in consultation with all individuals involved in the patient care, including the patient, referring physician, and the patient family. The patient and family input is vital in this decision making process they must clearly understand the risks involved in proceeding to transplantation and the post transplant care. In general, if a person has a poor chance of living in the next 1-2 years from their underlying liver disease, those patients are the candidates for liver transplant.
4. Which diseases are treated by liver transplantation?
A: A large number of diseases are capable of decreasing or interfering with the liver function and threatens the life of the patient. Most of these diseases are potentially treatable with liver transplantation. Heavy accumulation of scar tissue due to the death of liver cells due to various underlying diseases is called cirrhosis of the liver. Various causes of cirrhosis are chronic viral hepatitis such as hepatitis C or hepatitis B, alcohol and Non alcoholic fatty liver disease due to obesity. In children, the disease most often treated by liver transplantation is biliary atresia, which is a failure of bile ducts to develop normally and drain bile from the liver.
5. Is liver transplantation a common treatment for cancer of the liver?
A: Liver tumours that start in the liver, such as hepatocellular carcinoma, that have not spread to other organs can be cured by transplantation. However, if the liver cancer has spread outside the liver, the patient is not a candidate for liver transplantation. Patients with a single tumour that is less than 5 cm in size or have no more than three tumours all less than 3 cm in size can be cured with liver transplantation and have excellent long term survival.
6. Do you have an age limit?
A: The age limit is individualized as it varies with a patients overall health condition. However, it is rare to offer liver transplant to someone greater than 70 years old.
7. Who can qualify as a liver donor?
A: Live liver donors are relatives or close acquaintances of the recipient. They must have a compatible blood type and body size, as determined by the recipients height and weight. In addition, donors must be between the age of 18 and 60. They must also test negative for liver diseases and can have no serious medical conditions such as diabetes, cancer or heart disease.
8. How is the liver transplant surgery performed, and how long will it take?
A: Simultaneously, two separate surgical transplant teams perform the donor and recipient surgeries. As one team works on removing the diseased liver from the recipient, the other is working on removing a portion of the donors healthy liver. Once the portion of the donors healthy liver has been removed, it is immediately implanted into the recipient. The live liver donor surgery typically takes about 5-6 hours, and the recipient surgery of removal of diseased liver followed by implantation of new liver takes 12-14 hours.
9. How long will donor and recipient be in the hospital after surgery?
A: The average donor will be in the hospital for 4-7 days. The recipient will remain in the hospital for about 14-21 days. It is very important to tell that the liver regenerates in the donor as well as the recipient to its full functional capacity as well as size in few weeks.
10. What are the risks involved to the donor ?
A: With the evolution in preoperative planning and surgical techniques, better intraoperative and postoperative care, the donor surgery is quite safe nowadays. There are still chances of some minor complications in 15-20 percent of cases and major complications in about 1-2 percent of cases.
11. How long does it take to recover from liver transplantation?
A: Recovery after liver transplantation depends in part on how ill the patient was prior to surgery. Most patients need to count on spending a few days in the hospital in the intensive care unit and another few days on the ward; about a minimum of 2 weeks in the hospital is our estimate. The range of days spent in the hospitalization is from 10 days to maybe even six weeks.
12. What side effects do patients who have had liver transplantation commonly experience from the medicines they take to treat or prevent rejection?
A: All the medications used to prevent rejection increase a patient's susceptibility to infections. Various medicines are used, and each has its own set of effects and side effects..
13. What is the overall success rate of a liver transplant?
A: The answer to this question depends on many factors, but overall success rate nowadays is 85% to 95%.
14. Do the patient who is donating the liver/donor and the patient who will receive the liver/recipient have to be matched by tissue type/sex/age etc?
A: No. At this time for liver transplantation, the only requirements are that the donor and recipient need to be approximately the same size and have compatible blood types. No other matching is necessary such as gender or age. Now blood incompatible transplants are also being carried out successfully.
15. Can individuals have physical activity after receiving a new liver?
A: The liver transplant recipient can lead absolutely normal life after liver transplantation. We encourage patients to get out of bed as soon as feasible. Most patients can return to a normal or near-normal existence and participate in fairly vigorous physical exercise six to 12 months after successful liver transplant.
16. Please give the final words of advise to the general public.
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