- The Parent belong to Jehovah witness, where blood transfusion is not allowed in their religion
The liver transplant team at Rela Hospital performed a rather unique case of Liver Transplantation without Blood Transfusion.
This was performed on a 3-year-old Ukrainian girl child Milana. She came to Rela Hospital, Chennai with a critical medical condition. Since they belong to the Jehovah Witness (followers of a Christian faith that prohibits the use of blood or blood products during their treatment) the parents placed a special request of performing the surgery without blood transfusion.
Speaking about the surgery, Prof. Mohamed Rela, Chairman, Rela Hospital said “with liver failure blood does not clot. So during the transplant, we need to transfuse blood and blood products but in this case, the child was prepared for liver transplant with medication to improve her anemia and later taken for transplant, meticulous care was taken during surgery to reduce blood loss and we managed to perform the liver transplant successfully without blood transfusion.”
"Baby Milana was born with a condition called biliary atresia - it is a condition where the bile duct connecting the liver and intestine is not formed. It is a birth defect which occurs in 1 out of 10000 birth. If this condition is diagnosed before 60 days of life a surgery can be performed where it clears the Jaundice and protect the baby from undergoing a transplant" said Dr. Naresh Shanmugam, Director- Women and Child Health & Senior Consultant- Paediatric Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Rela Hospital
The child's father, Boris said "Our child was suffering from liver disease for more than two years. We traveled across Europe but no doctors gave the assurance on the transplantation without blood transfusion then we came to know about Rela Hospital from our friends and saved our child's life. We are grateful to the medical team at Rela for their efforts and obeying our belief.”
