Indian doctors save father-of-two by transplanting liver for a second time
- In an incredibly rare procedure, doctors used a liver rejected by one transplant patient to save the life of a second man
- Anil Kashyap says he is ‘feeling good and hoping for a full recovery’
Doctors at the Max Hospital in Saket, New Delhi, saved the life of Anil Kashyap when they performed a liver transplant on the father-of-two on October 6.
But this was no ordinary transplant – and no ordinary liver. In an incredibly rare procedure, doctors used an organ that had previously been transplanted into another patient – one who had died at another hospital in the capital after his body rejected it.
After the death of the first patient, an alert went out to hospitals across the capital that the man’s organs were available for donation, including the already once-transplanted liver.
However, initially there were no takers.
“Patients feared [the liver] might be defective, they worried that the first transplant patient would have already been in intensive care for over a week and caught infections, and they feared an already rejected liver might be rejected again,” explained Dr Subhash Gupta, chairman of liver transplant and biliary sciences at Max Hospital.