Liver of a corpse saves two lives

New Delhi: In a rare surgery, doctors at a city hospital split cadaver liver of a 32-year-old brain dead

patient and gave one lobe each to two persons in dire need of a liver transplant, thus giving them them a fresh lease of

life.

The donor had sustained brain hemorrhage in Dubai in May this year and was operated upon there but to no avail. He was

shifted to Indraprastha Apollo hospitals in India where neuro surgeons declared him brain dead at arrival, said Dr Shaleen

Agarwal, senior consultant at the department of Liver Transplant Surgery at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals.

His family consented to donate his organs and doctors split his liver and gave one lobe to a 29-year-old man from Jalandhar who suffered from chronic alcoholic liver failure and had been on the transplant list for five months.

According to the doctors, he would not have survived if he hadn't been operated upon in next two-three months. The other

half of the liver went to a 42-year-old woman, a Delhiite who had a chronic liver failure and was on the transplant list for

a year.

Explaining the uniqueness of the case, Dr Subash Gupta, Chief Liver Surgeon at the hospital said that as the two parts

of a liver are not equal, surgeons use the right half for an adult patient and the other half for a small child.

"Cadaveric liver are very rarely split and used for two adults with advanced liver disease as the left lobe is the smaller portion and may not be enough to sustain the person," said Dr Gupta.

In this case the doctors split the liver into two halves before taking it out.