With her liver, a mother gives baby girl another life
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With her liver, a mother gives baby girl another life

Doctors carried out a 14-hour long and complex liver transplant surgery.

With her liver, a mother gives baby girl another life

Gurugram: To save the life of her one-year-old baby daughter, a mother donated her liver to her.

In a rare surgery, doctors at Artemis Hospital, Gurugram, carried out a 14-hour long and complex liver transplant surgery called Monosegment (Segment 3) liver graft transplant on a little girl from Saudi Arabia.

Baby Fatima (name changed) underwent an extremely rare living donor liver transplant surgery (Monosegment), where only one out of eight portions of the liver were used to provide a new life to the baby.

The surgery is the first reported case in Delhi-NCR in which monosegmented liver graft has been used. Besides, the use of bovine jugular vein in liver transplant, to provide an inflow of blood to the newly transplanted liver, has also been reported for the first time in the world.  The baby was born without bile ducts and underdeveloped portal vein.


While briefing the press about the operation, doctors said that managing the child during such a long surgery was a tedious and tricky task, but was meticulously and successfully handled by a team of specialists and paramedics.


The third child of Ahmed and Sarah, Fatima had unusually prolonged and deep jaundice months after her birth. Doctors in Saudi Arabia diagnosed her with a rare disease called biliary atresia which is found in 1:16,000 live births. The development of bile ducts in such children is absent. Fatima underwent biliary bypass surgery at a local hospital in Saudi Arabia before coming to India.


Due to the unsuccessful and unsatisfactory outcome of biliary bypass surgery, she was advised liver transplant by the doctors in Saudi Arabia. However, considering her poor nutritional status and body weight (5.2kg), they were reluctant to perform such a complex surgery and hence referred her to India.


Dr Giriraj Bora, Joint Chief, Liver Transplant and Sr. Consultant, GI and HPB Surgery at Artemis Hospitals, said, “Transplant in babies weighing less than 6 kg is considered extremely complex and even a left lateral lobe from the donor (mother in her case) was big for such a small baby. Another major challenge was to get a blood supply for the new liver as Portal Vein (main blood vessel to supply blood to the liver) was absent in the baby and we had to find a way to overcome this complex problem.”


Dr Ramdip Rey, Joint Chief, Liver Transplant  Sr. Consultant, GI and HPB Surgery at Artemis Hospitals said, “Her mother was the only available donor but big grafts can cause a blood vessel to thrombose (clotting of blood) soon after transplant and the entire graft is lost in many cases.”


He further said, “As per the liver transplant team, this is possibly the first of its kind surgery performed in Delhi-NCR.”


Her mother Sarah, liver donor, is perfectly fine and healthy. She is happy seeing her baby doing well after surgery.


She said, “We have no words to describe the wonderful experience and care we got at Artemis Hospital. We had lost all hope after our baby was denied surgery at Saudi and during those difficult times we came to know about the quality and cost-effective liver transplantation in India.”