CHENNAI: As cases began to pile up during the second Covid wave in early April, hopes came crashing for a 48-year- old lawyer, Ramesh Babu, who was in urgent need of a liver. Doctors in MGM Healthcare told him that his wife’s organ could not be used for him as their blood groups did not match. Almost parallelly, a 57-year-old businessman from Gummidipundi, Rajhashekar was also told that his son’s liver was too small for him. Both the lawyer and businessman would have been waitlisted for a cadaveric organ in the state registry, Transtan, had luck not smiled at them. The medical team processing the reports found that a part of the liver from lawyer’s wife
Nancy Babu would be adequate for the businessman. His son Aditya was a universal donor(blood group 0+).

The Institute of Liver Transplant pushed the papers for swap liver transplants in Tamil Nadu under the Chief Minister Health Insurance Scheme. The state government agreed, and the hospital made a detailed plan for two simultaneous transplants and carried out the surgery on April 4.

“We have to run between four theatres two donors and two recipients,” said liver transplant surgeon Dr Karthik Mathivanan. “It took nearly 10 hours for each transplant, but we had two teams including transplant surgeons, anesthetists, transplant critical care experts and technicians,” he said