Blow to patients: Osmania General Hospital stops liver transplant

HYDERABAD: In a huge blow to patients needing urgent liver transplants, the only government hospital in the state has stopped transplantation largely due to lack of infrastructure.
Despite a huge waiting list of 180 adult patients, and nearly double the number of children, awaiting a transplant, the department of surgical gastroenterology at the Osmania General Hospital (OGH), which carried out 14 liver transplantations, beginning October last year, has downed the shutters on the life-saving procedure. Doctors said the department doesn’t have an operation theatre (OT) of its own and manages its regular surgeries on two days (Monday and Thursdays) with the general surgery department.

“Operating on one day and not having access to the theatre the very next day makes things complicated as many liver transplant patients develop reactions and require re-assessment and re-surgery too,” said a senior doctor, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media. The surgical gastroenterology department happens to be the only super-speciality department in the OGH which doesn’t have an OT of its own.
“The general surgery OT isn’t high-end and sterilised as required for liver transplantations, resulting in some patients developing infections,” said another insider. Among the two types of liver transplantations — cadaver and live liver — the live transplantation requires two high-end OTs.
For the past four months not a single transplant has taken place, which authorities also blame on decline in cadaver donations.
“With cadaver donations not occurring, the only option we have is to opt for live donors. But we need two separate high-end operation theatres for donor surgery and for recipient’s surgery. Liver transplantation is a complex immuno-compromised surgery which needs to have safe theatres and intensive care unit (ICU)s. It is a universal practice,” said Dr C Madhusudan, head of department of gastroenterology, adding, “We are unable to do live donor transplants as we do not have such a set-up. We are ready to do cadaver transplants, but there are no donations.”
TV: The only hope for hundreds of patients from the economically-weaker sections of society are state-run hospitals, as they cannot afford treatment in a corporate facility. Therefore the government must immediately ensure that the gastroenterology department gets a new operation theatre and transplants can resume soon.