A 44-year-old man recently underwent a one-of-its-kind liver transplant. Nearly three months later, he is back to his normal self, said his wife Sakthi Devi.

M. Ram Prabhu, who had liver cirrhosis, was listed for transplant in the State’s transplant registry for a year. The pandemic made it difficult to procure a cadaver organ for him. On two occasions, an organ was available from Chandigarh and Kolkata but the logistics of procuring it posed a hurdle. In March, when a patient admitted to MGM Healthcare died and his blood group (AB) matched with that of the donor, doctors prepared Mr. Ram Prabhu for transplant.

But the donor liver’s condition was unstable owing to administration of high doses of blood pressure support drugs.

The surgeons used a hypothermic oxygenated perfusion (HOPE) liver pump that helped repair and improves the quality of the organ by pumping preservative fluid into the organ at a temperature of 4-6 degrees Celsius, and oxygen was further added to the fluid through a
membrane oxygenator. The patient was prepared for surgery, and the organ was transplanted. And around 20% of the liver was discarded because of its poor condition.

Though some transplant centers in India had tried normothermic perfusion (using human blood to improve the quality of donor organs), the prohibitive costs had forced them to abandon the procedure, said Karthik Mathivanan, associate director of the institute.