he deceased donor organ donation programme run by the State government – Mrithasanjeevani – has seen remarkable success in the initial years of its launch itself with the programme completing over 500 successful major organ transplants in the past three years.
However, as the government takes another significant step forward in the organ transplantation scene, by launching the first cadaver liver transplantation unit in the public sector (at Government Medical College Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram), one question that has been worrying all health officials is the total lack of organ transplant survival data.
Well-guarded secrets
What are the long-term survival chances of a patient undergoing an organ transplant in the State? Survival data on live organ donations – especially liver – in private sector corporate hospitals are well-guarded secrets.
But even under Mrithasanjeevani programme, the authorities have not been able to garner any data on the short- or long-term survival of patients who have received organs from brain-dead donors because none of the hospitals doing deceased donor organ transplant has been reporting it.
Mandatory
Hospitals registered as transplant centres under the Kerala Network for Organ Sharing (KNOS), the nodal agency for Mrithasanjeevani, are required to mandatorily report the patient survival data – which is reported for one-year or five-year periods after transplant -- to KNOS. But it has not been happening.
“The success of any organ transplantation programme is measured by this survival data. Survival benefit is good for those who have undergone renal transplants but liver transplants are more complex and fraught with issues. It is a fact that primary dysfunction of graft has been happening in many cases of cadaver liver transplant with the transplant recipients dying within a short period. But we have no data to evaluate,” a senior doctor said.
According to informal data collected in 2014 on one-year survival of patients who received cadaveric organs under Mrithasanjeevani, it was 95 per cent for kidney transplants, while for liver, it was 80 per cent – meaning that for hundred patients who get a cadaveric liver, 80 will survive the first year, while 20 would have died within the first year.
