Mumbai: 13-month-old undergoes successful liver transplant
A 13-month-old child became the youngest in Maharashtra to undergo a successful liver transplant. Ram Mistry, weighing 6.5 kgs, suffered from a rare congenital condition called Biliary Atresia that led to advanced liver cirrhosis just months after his birth. When he was operated upon, he was already suffering from end-stage liver disease, which made the transplant critical for the Navi Mumbai hospital doctors.
'Surgical correction only works in 40% of Biliary atresia cases'
"Biliary atresia is a rare disease in newborns, where the liver's bile ducts are absent. It requires early surgical correction, which only works in 40% of the cases," said Dr Darius Mirza, a multi-organ transplant Lead at Apollo Hospitals.
Parents say it was difficult to convince family, finding docs
Doctors at the Apollo Hospitals in CBD-Belapur, Navi Mumbai performed the transplant in February and Ram was discharged in March. Ram's father Pritesh, 32, a construction mixer supplier, and his mother Ishani, 27, said they had to face a lot of hurdles to get this transplant done. Right from convincing family members, till finding doctors in their hometown Vadodara, everything was mired with difficulties.
Transplant expenses met through crowd-funding, NGO
Ram was two-months old when he underwent a Kasai procedure in Ahmedabad, whereby his liver was joined with bile duct. However, few months post-surgery, his jaundice relapsed and that was when he was brought to Mumbai. While the child's aunt Valsad-resident Divya (34) became the donor, transplant expenses of Rs. 22 lakh were met through NGO donations, crowd-funding, and grant from Apollo Hospitals' CSR.
'He'd vomit anything he ate and it was traumatic'
"He'd vomit anything he ate and it was stressful to see him go through all this at such tender age. I'm indebted to my sister for donating a part of her liver. We are grateful to the doctors and to all who donated," said Ishani.
