New Delhi. Aug. 10: A 60-year-old businessman from Salem, Tamil Nadu, suffering from end-stage liver failure is now back home with two healthy half livers — after India’s first double liver transplant operation by surgeons in the capital.

Transplant surgeon Arvinder Soin and his colleagues at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi, have successfully implanted two chunks of half livers from two relatives, in a rare and complex surgery that lasted over 14 hours.

“We opted for a double transplant because of a size mismatch between the livers of the two donors and the patient,” Soin said.

Both the donors were slim-built, weighing less than 45 kg. Doctors could have removed 70 per cent of the liver from either one of the donors, but decided against that option in the interest of donor safety. Instead, they removed half the liver from each of the donors and carried out two simultaneous transplants.

The procedure increased the complexity of the surgery but ensured that the total liver volume from both donors would prove adequate for the patient.

The surgeons had to create 11 fine connections of blood vessels and bile ducts between the two new livers and the patient. In a typical liver transplant, only five blood vessel connections have to be made.

“This advance in liver transplantation may now provide hope to overweight persons suffering from terminal liver disease who have traditionally been denied living donor liver transplantation because of liver size mismatch between donor and recipient, said Samiran Nundy, head of surgical gastroenterology at the hospital.

The transplantation procedure was done on July 6 and the patient was discharged three weeks after the operation.

The patient as well as the donors are doing fine, Soin said. Both livers are functioning well, the doctor added.