Liver transplant awareness programme in Guntur

Chairman and managing director of Global Hospitals Group Dr K Ravindranath said that Global Hospital was the only center in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana for the exclusive liver transplantation programme and that the institution was keen on taking up public programmes to raise awareness on it.

“Global Hospitals Group as a multi-super specialty, tertiary care hospital chain is India’s largest multi-locational, multi-organ transplant centre, which performs liver, heart, lung, kidney organ transplants. The group till date has performed over 600 liver transplants and in Hyderabad unit alone we have completed close to 350 transplants including patients from Guntur and Krishna districts. Our surgeons perform the widest variety of transplants procedures on both adult and pediatric patients such as split liver, auxiliary liver and swap liver. These are performed through both cadaveric organ and live related donor programmes,” said Dr Ravindranath.

Head of liver transplantation at Global Hospital, Hyderabad Dr Tom Cherian, said, “Three hundred transplants is an important milestone, as it highlights the huge experience that this centre has had with patients with liver disease. We have now set up an advanced acute liver failure unit to look after and transplant patients with sudden liver failure. The saddest part about acute liver failure is that it has a 70-80 per cent chance of death without transplantation once liver coma has been established,’’ he said.

Senior Hepatologist Dr Dharmesh Kapoor said, “Our liver transplant programme is the only one in the country where ten year or more follow-up is available for transplant recipients. The commonest indication for transplant patient is advanced liver disease or cirrhosis, followed by those who have liver cancer and for whom the best treatment is liver transplant. About five to ten per cent of liver transplants happen for acute liver failure.”

According Dr Kapoor, in the western world, the transplants due to end-stage alcoholic liver disease are coming down but in our country and in our programme we are transplanting at least a quarter of the patients for end-stage liver disease due to alcohol.