DOHA: Aster DM Healthcare, a leading private healthcare services provider in GCC and an emerging player in India, announced yesterday that it has performed Asia’s first-ever liver transplant using Normothermic Machine Perfusion, a process which can keep a liver alive outside the body for up to 24 hours by maintaining it at body temperature.
The surgery — considered the next important step forward in liver transplantation — was successfully performed at Aster CMI Hospital in Bangalore using OrganOx Metra device technology, said a statement.
Aster CMI has become the first hospital in India and the wider Asia region to use the perfusion technique as part of its standard clinical practice which allows physicians to test how well a liver is functioning before transplant, boosting the chances that the procedure will be a success.
The announcement has come at a time when the demand-supply disparity in India for organ transplant remains a critical issue, which is primarily attributed to lack of awareness and infrastructure.
Furthermore, the organ transplant success rate in India is low compared to developed nations in the West, and often this is due to the functionality of organs deteriorating during the preservation stage that lasts up to 12-14 hours.
