Kochi: The life of 13-month-old baby Hana Fathima, daughter of Mohammed Jabir and Ameera, Kanjirappilakkal, Ottappalam, was saved by a complex liver transplantation at VPS Lakeshore Hospital here.
Little Hana was suffering from a congenital liver disease called biliary atresia and was brought from another hospital after two surgeries to VPS Lakeshore in June with a failing liver and severe blood stream infection and jaundice. Doctors decided that liver transplantation was the only option. A major hurdle, however, was that her portal vein (the main blood vessel of the liver) was undeveloped and blood flow from the portal vein is a necessity for a liver transplant surgery.
Doctors decided to put a stent into the child’s portal vein. However, portal vein stents for children were not available and secondly there was no route present for it. Doctor Abhishek Yadav and team then employed an innovative technique and used the umbilical vein (which is a congenital blood vessel) of the donor’s liver to introduce a carotid artery (neck artery) stent of an adult size into the child’s portal vein. The liver transplant was successfully performed in July and the child is now being discharged with a new life. The surgery was supported by crowd-funding initiatives led by Firoz Kunnamparambil, a soc-ial worker in Palakkad.
