After remaining off oral food for over a year, his dishes now primarily comprise vegetable soups and some special feed.
“I have stopped taking the food on my plate for granted. I savour what I eat, ” said Sangvi resident Vikas (name changed on request), who had developed intestinal gangrene in October 2019.
The 34-year-old man was left with no option but to undergo complete small intestine resection (removal), as living with it could have cost him his life.
On September 2 this year, Kiran successfully underwent a small bowel transplant surgery at the Jupiter hospital in Pune. The surgery was possible after relatives of a 15-year-old brain-dead Bengaluru boy donated his small intestine. The surgery was claimed to be western India’s second successful small bowel transplant. The first transplant had also taken place at the same hospital in March this year.
“The patient has made a good recovery. He will be able to eat solid food in another month,” hospital’s chief multiorgan transplant surgeon, Gaurav Chaubal, told TOI.
“This is the country’s 12th small bowel transplant and only second in Western India,” Chaubal said.
In October last year the Sangvi resident had complained of acute abdominal pain and was diagnosed with intestinal gangrene. He had developed a clot in the main artery supplying blood to the intestine resulting in gangrene. “Doctors had to cut off his entire small bowel to save his life,” Chaubal said.
The transplant surgeons from Jupiter hospital flew to Bengaluru to procure the small intestine from the 15-year-old brain-dead donor on September 2. After retrieval, the small intestine has to be transplanted within seven hours. “The transport of organs from outside states usually requires the use of chartered flights to cut short the travel time. But due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this was not possible. The organ was flown into Pune from Bangalore in a commercial flight,” said Aarti Gokhale, transplant coordinator of the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee, the apex body that oversees coordination and allocation of donated organs as per the norms.
