Apollo Hospital performs combined Liver Transplant, Open Heart Surgery on 5-yr-old

Hyderabad, February 26, 2017: City-based specialists at Apollo Hospital here created a medical history by performing a living donor liver transplant and an open heart surgery within a span of few hours on a five year old baby girl, with multiple health problems including advanced liver cirrhosis, congenital heart defects, severe growth retardation and rickets.

Briefing media about this humongous accomplishment here today, Dr Manish C Varma (Head of the Liver Transplant Department, Apollo Hospitals), Dr Girish Warrier (Consultant Pediatric Cardiac Surgeon, Apollo Hospitals) and Sangita Reddy (Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals), said the baby was suffering from a rare genetic disorder, though the ailment was diagnosed two years ago elsewhere, complexity of performing liver transplant and heart defect correction in one go and not having a precedence to this, prevented them from providing succor to the baby.

Five year old baby girl, Parvati Rohra, hailing from Hyderabad, is suffering from a rare genetic disorder called Alagille Syndrome.

It occurs with a frequency of 1:1,00,000 children and can impact the liver, heart, lungs, kidneys, bones among others, however the severity of the problem varies from patient to patient, they said.

Because of Alagille Syndrome, Parvati had advanced liver cirrhosis, severe cardiac defects including Pulmonary Artery hypoplasia, Pulmonary valve dysplastic, Atrial and Ventricular septal defect, resulting in severe Pulmonary Artery Hypertension, severe growth retardation and rickets.
She was leading an extremely traumatic life, deprived of the normal childhood which kids of her age longed for.

Her medical history indicated, that she presented initially with jaundice in the first few months after birth.

Her parents consulted a hospital in Mumbai, which diagnosed this as biliary atresia and were counseled for liver transplant, however due to the baby being underweight – 10 kgs, the transplant team was not confident of operating on such a small child, they said. –United News of India