Nagpur: Rough weather and distance could not prevent doctors from bringing a liver from Aurangabad for transplant to save the life of a 58-year-old patient in Nagpur.
City liver surgeon Dr Rahul Saxena from New Era hospital travelled in the green corridor from Aurangabd to Nagpur, covering a distance of about 600km, and brought the liver to Nagpur in about seven-and-a-half hours. The surgery started around 9.30pm and was expected to last six hours.
“Normally, a liver should be transplanted in the recipient within six hours of retrieval or harvesting from the donor. Since the brain dead donor was just a 25-year-old woman, delay of a few hours may not matter much as the quality of organ is very good,” said Dr Saxena.
The donor belonged to AB blood group, which is rare. “We had a patient in waiting list for the last three months of the same group. So, the hospital decided to go ahead and travel to Aurangabad by road to get the liver,” said Dr Anand Sancheti, one of the hospital directors.
The kidneys were used by the Aurangabad hospital. The cause of brain death was post partum venus haemorrhage, or bleeding in the brain. “This is the second time a liver has been brought from another zone. This is our ninth
liver transplant,” said Dr Nilesh Aggrawal, another hospital director.
The green corridor was made possible, thanks to the efforts and coordination by former traffic ACP Jameel Ahmed, who helped the doctors. “It would not have been possible for us to reach Nagpur on time without Ahmed’s support. Yet, due to the weather, there were jams on the way and we reached Nagpur in seven-and-a-half hours,” said Dr Saxena.
Dr Vibhawari Dani and Dr Ravi Wankhede, the president and secretary of Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee, respectively, coordinated for the procedure.
