Doctors race against time to transplant organs in 3 patients

KOLKATA: On Friday, a team of doctors worked through the night to save the lives of three patients with the organs donated by Mallika Majumdar’s family. The doctors — from various centres — retrieved, harvested and transplanted the kidneys and the liver. Mallika’s corneas and skin, too, have been banked. But the hunt for a recipient for the heart went unfruitful.
The retrieval of the organs could have started as early as 5.30pm on Friday, but the

hunt for the heart recipient and the wait for the liver retrieval team delayed the process. SSKM Hospital, that houses the ROTTO office, was informed about a matching liver recipient from Hyderabad who was willing to fly to Kolkata. Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals pulled in its medical team from Chennai to retrieve the liver. The wait got longer.

“The retrieval procedure started around 1.10am once the team arrived from Chennai and the procedure took around three hours,” said Dr Sandeep Kumar Kar, transplant coordinator, who supported as retrieval anaesthesiologist along with colleague Dr Kakoli Ghosh.

In fact, the entire CCU team at SSKM Hospital where Mallika was admitted under Dr Ashutosh Ghosh had been working hard to maintain her organs since August 15, when the girl was declared brain dead. Another team of doctors had been counselling the family to get them to agree to donate her organs.

The Apollo organ retrieval team arrived at SSKM Hospital around 12.30am. The two kidneys were retrieved first and then the liver. While the latter went to a 44-year-old patient in Apollo, the two kidneys were transplanted to a 24-year-old woman and a 31-yearold renal-failure patient at SSKM itself.

“Despite the highs and lows and the nail-biting moments, three organs were retrieved and transplanted,” said Dr Rajat Chowdhury, ITU in-charge at SSKM Hospital.

The transplant surgeries at SSKM started around 4am and ended around 7am. The surgery at Apollo, too, took almost four hours.

“We will be working harder so that other organs, like the heart, do not go to waste the next time,” said Dr Aditi Kishore Sarkar, state nodal officer on organ transplant. Sarkar himself stayed back at SSKM Hospital till late into Friday night to oversee the procedures.

Doctors in the organ donation movement said that till the state has a software-based organ allocation/sharing registry, confusions and delay will keep cropping up and hinder the process.