KEM hospital is preparing for its first live liver transplant in 14 years, as it currently has two such patients and donors. Meanwhile, it is awaiting organ donors to resume its cadaveric liver transplant facilities, which were shut during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 19 individuals listed for it.

Dr Chetan Kantharia, head of the Surgical Gastroenterology Department, said, “For the live liver transplant patients, we have the recipient admitted, and we are checking donors for fitness.” The hospital’s last live liver transplant attempt was in 2010 but the programme was shut down after the death of both, the recipient and the patient, due to post-surgical infections.