Hyderabad: Apollo Hospitals on Friday said that it had performed a “rare” liver transplant on a six and a half- month-old baby boy weighing 5.5 kilos.
The critical liver transplant was performed by the team at the Jubilee Hills hospital led by Dr Manish C Varma, Chief Transplant Surgeon, on the baby boy, who was suffering from Biliary atresia.
The transplant was carried out by using a slice of the baby’s father’s liver which was taken on October 13. The infant is said to be doing well and has since been discharged, according to a release from Apollo Hospitals.
Biliary atresia is a congenital liver condition where the bile cannot drain from the liver through the bile ducts to the intestines.
Bile helps in the digestion of fats in the body and also carries waste products from the liver to the intestines for excretion. This condition occurs in 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 15,000 children.
If timely treatment is not administered, children suffering from Biliary atresia become malnourished and are easy prey for infections and complications of cirrhosis. A majority of such cases do not survive beyond two years.
The patient, Nitesh, had developed jaundice a few weeks after his birth. His parents consulted local doctors in their home-town, Bhimavaram. He was found to be suffering from very high jaundice, had already developed liver cirrhosis and was very small, weighing just about 5.5 kilos.
“The donor (father) was discharged on the sixth day after surgery and the baby was discharged after two weeks of transplant. Nitesh will need immunosuppressants all his life, but his overall growth will be normal. There will not be any long-term limitations to his growth, learning and life expectancy,” Dr Manish Varma said.