BANGALORE, May 11, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
The Department of Pediatric Surgery & Liver Transplants at Narayana Health City in Bengaluru announced the completion of 10 years since the inception of pediatric liver transplant program at the hospital. On this occasion, children who underwent liver transplant surgery came together with their parents, most of them being liver donors and interacted with doctors from Narayana Health City. Present on the occasion were Dr. Ashley D'cruz and Dr. Sanjay Rao, both senior pediatric surgeons specializing in pediatric liver transplants at Narayana Health City.
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The hospital has completed more than 60 successful liver transplants on children till date and is the only centre in India to have a dedicated team of pediatric liver transplant specialists with the required infrastructure.
The majority of children who have undergone liver transplant at Narayana Health City are below two years and less than 10 kilograms. Hence, in the spectrum of liver transplants this group falls under high risk group. According to Dr. Sanjay Rao, performing liver transplants on small children is very complex and challenging with high risks because, "They are very small and sick children with very small safety margins compared to adults. The operation is challenging and technically difficult as we have to operate with a very narrow margin of safety and all the vessels are very tiny." That could be one of the reasons for very few hospitals in India that are prepared to perform pediatric liver transplants. Narayana Health City has a dedicated team of specialists to perform pediatric liver transplants and has performed the largest number of liver transplants in very small children in India.
"The most common cause of liver failure in toddlers is biliary atresia, which manifests itself in the first few months after birth. The critical condition accounts for almost half the cases of liver failure among children. This disease leads to faster complications and higher mortality. The classic signs for chronic liver failure are severe jaundice, itching, excessive bleeding, stunted or retarded growth, bloated bellies, irritability and vomiting blood," informed Dr. Sanjay Rao.
It is estimated that in India 4000 children need liver transplant with hardly 100 cases getting treated. This may be attributed to the high cost of liver transplant surgery and lack of awareness among people apart from other social reasons due to which not many families opt for liver transplant for their children.
In addition, India's organ transplant regulations have also created a dearth of potential donors by limiting the pool to cadaveric and directly related donors within the family only. For living donors, it defines who can donate without any legal formalities. The relatives who are allowed to donate include mother, father, brothers, sisters, son, daughter, and spouse. However, in the case of children it gets restricted to parents, grandparents or siblings only. Recently, in the new gazette grandparents have been included in the list of first relatives. In this the trend is that majority of the donors are usually the parents where two-thirds constitute the mothers and the remaining one-third being the fathers.
About Narayana Health:
With all super-speciality tertiary care facilities that the medical world offers, Narayana Health is now a one-stop healthcare destination for all.
From the first facility established in Bengaluru with approximately 225 operational beds in 2000, our Company has grown to 55 facilities (which includes 54 facilities in India and 1 facility in the Cayman Islands operated by our company's associate company, Health City Cayman Islands Ltd.) with 5347 operational beds. Narayana Health has a network of 23 hospitals (multispeciality and superspeciality healthcare facilities which provide tertiary care services), 7 heart centres (superspeciality units which are set up in a third party hospital) and 24 primary care facilities (including clinics and information centres), across a total of 31 cities, towns and villages in India. For details, visit http://www.narayanahealth.org.
About Narayana Health City, Bengaluru:
NH Health City is located in Bommasandra, Bengaluru, which comprises of Narayana Institute of Cardiac Sciences (NICS), a superspecialty hospital for cardiology and cardiac surgery, and Mazumdar Shaw Medical Center (MSMC), a multispecialty hospital for cancer care, neurology and neurosurgery, nephrology, urology, and houses what we believe, is one of India's largest bone marrow transplant units. NH Health City operates a stem cell bank.
Media contact:
D K Venkatesh
[email protected]
+91-80 71 222 222
Narayana Health
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