CHENNAI: Two Sri Lankan patients requiring urgent liver transplants underwent a rare swap liver transplant in Chennai. Reportedly the first of its kind to be performed in Chennai, the transplant took place at Global Hospitals last month.When 50-year-old Mohamad Nazeem from Kandy, Sri Lanka came to Chennai for a liver transplant a few months ago, little would he have thought that he would receive a part of the organ needed for the transplant from another Sri Lankan. Though his wife was willing to donate a part of her liver, their blood groups did not match and she was not a viable donor.Meanwhile, 48-year-old Nazir also from Kandy was in a similar position. Having arrived in Chennai to undergo a liver transplant at Global Hospitals -- the same as Nazeem -- his blood group did not match that of his son’s who had been willing to donate a part of the organ.However, the two patients shared doctors who suggested that Nazeem’s wife and Nazir’s son be tested to see if they could donate to the other’s ailing kin. And that permutation worked.Prof Mohamed Rela, director of Hepatopancreatobiliary and Liver Transplantation of Global Hospitals Group, executed the ‘swap deal’ in a 16-hour procedure involving the four surgeries (two surgeries to take the livers from the donors and two, transplanting them to the affected) last month. Given the high burden of liver disease in the country, it is important to think of innovative ways to optimise the scarce resource of living donors, he said.
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