HT Bureau
GUWAHATI, May 30: The management and directors of Swagat Superspeciality Surgical Institute & NH announced adding liver transplant facility to the list of services in a press conference held at the auditorium of the institute.
Swagat Super Specialty Surgical Institute (SSSSI) was established in 2000 with the aim and objective of providing best of surgical technology at the disposal of patients from north-east India. Swagat Hospital has always thrived for excellence and tried to bring all the best of surgical innovative technologies. It has established itself as an advanced centre for Robotic and Laparoscopic Surgery, Gastrointestinal Surgery, Surgical Oncology (cancer surgery), Therapeutic Endoscopy, Head and neck Surgery, state of the art ICU and Cath lab, Urology, Plastic surgery and Thoracic surgery. Swagat Hospital has now added liver transplantation to the list of advanced surgical procedures. Although kidney transplant is a routine in some of the centers in our country, it was a long-fought battle to get the government’s approval for liver transplant, given that it mandates a wide variety of resources and state of the art facilities to meet up to the stringent guidelines. This comes as a relief to the deprived patients of the state of Assam and north-east India, who have a long list of waiting patients for various types of organ transplants. Liver transplant is a very labour-intensive process, which needs special attention from the specialists and frequent costly investigations in the postoperative period along with a long ICU stay. It also needs a cath lab with intervention radiologists and interventional cardiologists to check for well-being of the multiple anastomoses that are done during the transplantation, which Swagat Super Speciality has recently added. Apart from the medical costs, the patients need to stay back for a long period of time after the surgery and need frequent lifelong follow ups. The family needs to incur insurmountable costs during and after the treatment, pushing them to debt. The procedure currently costs Rs 30-40 lakh in Indian metro cities and currently there are only 3-4 major centers in the country that have been doing liver transplantation frequently. Swagat also aims to cut the transplant costs down to its most affordable rates. In this context, in a press release the chief medical director (CMD) of Swagat Super Specialty Surgical Institute (SSSSI), Prof. Subhash Khanna stressed on the need for health insurance for every citizen, given the ever-increasing number of chronic liver diseases patients and those with cancer in need of liver transplantation from our region. While thanking the government on behalf of Swagat Superspeciality Surgical Institute & NH, Prof. Khanna introduced the team members of the liver transplant team which included Dr. Basant Mahadevappa (Liver transplant surgeon), Dr. Amitava Goswami (Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist) and the team of surgeons, along with the team who were instrumental in following up the transplant programme and making it a success. Dr. Basant Mahadevappa is a transplant surgeon from Bangalore, who has performed over 276 liver transplants with over 20 years of experience and 7 years of experience in liver transplant in the UK and has experience of both living and deceased donor transplantation. He gave a small presentation on “who should undergo liver transplantation and its benefits”. SSSSI hopes to begin liver transplant a couple of months and are hopeful to begin this speciality for the people of north-east India who have to travel to faraway places. SSSSI would try to cut down the cost of such procedures to half. Liver transplantation involves either placing the whole of the liver inside the patient from a deceased donor or placing a part of a liver from a healthy donor. Due to bottlenecks in finding appropriate deceased donors, living-donor liver transplantation (LDLT) is the procedure which is mostly done. Patients whose liver function has deteriorated beyond cure by conservative means and liver cancer patients can also undergo liver transplantation. Pediatric patients need a smaller liver for transplant and this makes it safe, given that we only need a small piece of liver from the family member whereas an adult will need a larger liver. Swagat will soon be announcing the special screening camp for identification and selection of appropriate patients for liver transplant. Around 1000-1500 liver transplantations happen in India.
Keeping in view of the plight of the patients needing liver transplantation, the country, and more specifically our state needs more of such centre’s capable of providing such care. In north-east India, there is a severe lack of liver transplantation facilities. Swagat Hospitals shall try to fill in that lacuna. It is noteworthy that liver transplantation was started in Assam in one of the leading hospitals of Assam a few years back but unfortunately it is not being done regularly now.
