Shalby Hospital Ahmedabad on Wednesday announced plans to launch Gujarat’s first Hand Transplant Programme in collaboration with Global Hospitals Mumbai. Hand transplant is one of the rare surgeries in India and most of the advanced transplant centres are based in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.
Hand transplant is a complex surgery and is conducted by a large team of surgeons and anesthetists. It usually lasts for 14 to 16 hours, and there is a window of only 18 hours in which the donor’s hands must be transplanted.
Gujarat is known for medical tourism but when it comes to hand transplant, we still have a long way to go. Dr Hardik Dodia, Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeon at Shalby Hospitals said, “Hand transplant is a treatment option for people who have lost both upper limbs due to accident, burns or other such causes. In hand transplantation the person receives the hand from a brain dead donor who has matching HLA and blood type. Hand transplant is different from other solid organ transplants as it is a composite tissue allotransplantation where the amount of antigenicity in tissue is much more.”
Some of the glitches that need to be addressed in conducting a successful hand transplant surgery are: logistics. Cardiovascular surgeon Sukumar Mehta said, “In most organ transplants, the most challenging thing is to connect the patient with the right doner at the right time. Through this organ-transplant programme we are trying to ease the process and provide the patient a new lease of life.”
Multi-organ transplant in Shalby
Dr Nishita Shukla, Group COO of Shalby Hospitals said, “Apart from hand transplant we are also starting a multiple-organ transplant programme in Shalby Hospitals. Under our collaboration with Global Hospitals Mumbai their experienced and trained liver transplant experts will be visiting Gujarat regularly.”
Dr. Nilesh Satbhai, HOD & Senior Consultant – Plastic, Hand, Reconstructive Microsurgery & Transplant Surgery at Global Hospital Parel, Mumbai said, “The advanced infrastructure available at Shalby Hospitals Ahmedabad, in addition to expertise of the surgical team has culminated into creation of the first Hand Transplant Program of Gujarat. With the local team, we look forward to doing hand transplants here in Ahmedabad and help in the rehabilitation of the needy patients.”
The programme is yet to get a green signal from organ transplantation authorities of Govt of Gujarat. For getting such approval, Shalby Hospital has applied to the Government.
Also read: https://www.vibesofindia.com/shalby-hospital-launches-rehab-centre/
