In World's first, Chennai hosp performs Robotic liver transplant on 5-year-old

United News of India

22-05-2025

Chennai, May 22 (UNI) Perhaps for the first time in the world, the Chennai-based leading multi-speciality Rela Hospital has successfully performed a Robotic Liver Transplant on the youngest recipient to date-- five-year-old child.
This marked a major milestone in the field of robotic and paediatric transplant surgery, combining cutting-edge technology with complex surgical expertise to deliver faster recovery and improved outcomes.
Talking to reporters here on Thursday, its Chairman Prof Mohammed Rela said the hospital has achieved a historic milestone by becoming the first hospital in the world to perform a robotic liver transplant on a five-year-old child.
This makes the child the youngest recipient of a robotic liver transplant globally, marking a major advancement in both paediatric and robotic surgery.
The patient (recipient), a five-year-old boy, was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition called Urea Cycle Defect, in which the liver cannot properly process proteins from food, leading to a harmful buildup of ammonia in the blood--a condition that can severely affect the brain.
A liver transplant offered a definitive cure. The surgery proceeded smoothly without any complications, and the child was discharged within a week.
In contrast, the conventional approach typically requires a hospital stay of 14 to 21 days, he said.
The fact that the robotic surgery was performed on a child makes this achievement even more significant, as pediatric bodies offer far less space than adults', posing greater challenges for the insertion and maneuvering of robotic instruments.
Remarkably, even the procedure to harvest a portion of the liver from a living donor was carried out using robotic assistance. The donor also had a brief hospital stay and was discharged within five days.
Prof. Mohamed Rela said this was the first time in the world, Pediatric liver transplantation has been successfully performed completely using the Robotic Platform. This is a major milestone in the field
of surgery itself.
This is an extremely complex surgery with delicate microvascular anastomosis techniques. To add
to the complexity the operation was also performed as an Auxiliary Liver Transplant which is the
most technically complex of all liver transplant operations.
This advancement in the field of liver transplantation not only offers rapid recovery with less pain,
but also helps with normal psycho-social development of these children during their teen years without a large scar in their abdomen.
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