- BLK Super Speciality Hospital in Delhi performs the first DCD liver transplant on a 45-year-old in India.
- Generally in vital organ transplant surgeries, the donor organ is taken from a brain dead patient.
- But as the name suggests, in DCD or Donation after Cardiac Death, the organ is taken from the patient when his/her heart stops pumping blood.
- According to data, there has been DCD of kidney in India but never of the liver.
- Senior consultant and Director of the Department of HPB Surgery and Liver Transplant, Dr. Sanjay Singh Negi explains that in brain dead donors, blood circulation and functioning of the organs at a cellular level stays intact.
- Whereas in DCD, the organ suffers from a brief absence of blood supply resulting in dearth of oxygen leading to ischemia.
- So, Dr. Negi adds, unlike in kidney transplant where the ischemic time is of about 2 hours, liver transplant through DCD is more challenging as the Ischemic time is just 30 minutes and re-perfusion of the graft has to be quick.
- Recovery of the patient post liver transplant is stable.
Source: BLK Super Speciality Hospital, Media Update