From Times of India
Pushpa Narayan, TNN 20 September 2009, 06:33am IST
CHENNAI: On September 16, when doctors at the Government General Hospital here performed Tamil Nadu’s first heart transplant in the public
sector, a team Global Hospitals created another record — it carried out the first split transplant and auxiliary liver transplant in the country using a cadaver organ. The liver, normally given to one patient, was split and given to two.
The four-hour heart transplant and the 20-hour liver transplant, senior health department officials believe, is the beginning of a new era in cadaver organ transplants. While a liver is transplanted into two patients, eye surgeons are transplanting cornea from one eye into two patients, accruing the maximum benefit.
When the family of teenager, declared brain-dead following a road accident in Salem on September 16 came forward to donate all his organs, they urged the doctors to save “as many lives” as possible.