Bhubaneswar: In a first for AIIMS Bhubaneswar, surgeons Friday successfully retrieved a liver from a 14-year-old brain dead girl and then sent it to a hospital in New Delhi through a green corridor, the premier institute’s executive director, Dr Ashutosh Biswas, said.
The girl, Damayanti Mahanta, had been suffering from chronic kidney disease and was undergoing dialysis for the past few months, an official said.
Her parents, Banita and Dukhabandhu, originally from Keonjhar district and currently residing in Bhubaneswar, decided to donate her useful organs after she was declared brain dead by doctors, the official added.
Damayanti suffered a brain stroke and was admitted to the department of medicine at AIIMS Bhubaneswar February 15. Subsequently, she went into a coma and was put on a ventilator. Showing no signs of recovery, she was declared brain dead by an expert committee from AIIMS Bhubaneswar after a series of tests, Biswas said.
Expressing gratitude to Damayanti’s parents for their humanitarian gesture, Biswas also commended the entire transplant team for successfully conducting the first deceased donor organ retrieval at the national institute.
He emphasised that Damayanti’s contribution will be remembered as a significant act of humanity.
Damayanti’s father Dukhabandhu Mahanta, an auto-driver, expressed his mixed emotions, saying, “We know that we have lost our daughter forever. If her body parts can help any other person, then there is nothing like it. We are shattered for losing our daughter and happy at the same time that another person will get life.”
Srikant Behera, the treating physician, coordinated the entire process, including obtaining consent.
Brumhadutta Pattnaik, a faculty member from the department of gastro surgery, was part of the surgery team.
PTI