Qatar’s first ever liver transplant from a living donor has successfully been performed at Hamad General Hospital.
The specialized organ transplant unit at Hamad Medical Corporation’s Hamad General Hospital have successfully performed the country’s first ever liver transplant from a living donor, according to The Peninsula.
Prior to this operation, all liver transplants performed in Qatar were done using livers from deceased donors. Adding this, the total number of liver transplants performed in the country become 17, while 20 to 25 people are put on the organ transplant waiting list each year.
Such an operation is very complex, and this particular one took place over two stages according to Dr Yousef Al Maslamani, Medical Director of Hamad General Hospital and Head of the Organ Transplant Committee.
It took a team of highly skilled liver transplant surgeons, anesthetists, nurses and technicians eight hours to remove a part of the donor’s liver, which then took 12 hours to relocate into the recipient’s body, who had to have his liver removed due to a severe case of liver cirrhosis.
The organ recipient was 58-year-old Ashraf Ziad, who had developed a liver tumor in 2016, and was advised to a transplant by his healthcare team after chemotherapy didn’t do him much help.
To his luck and after a thorough inspection, his 26-year-old nephew Usama was found to be a perfect donor.
The transplant was done last November, and both donor and recipient have completely recovered.
