Avicenna University Hospital Center (CHU) in Rabat announced on Sunday that multidisciplinary teams, in collaboration with the French Paul Brousse Hospital, performed two liver transplants in less than 48 hours using organs simultaneously harvested from related living donors, an unprecedented achievement in Moroccan medicine, according to a press release.
Overnight on September 9 to 10, a 19-year-old woman suffering from fulminant hepatitis and acute liver failure who had been admitted to the hospital went into a coma. The medical team successfully performed a liver transplant using the left lobe of her 53-year-old father’s liver.
A second liver transplant surgery followed less than 36 hours later. A 65-year-old woman with decompensated cirrhosis, an advanced stage of liver failure, received the right lobe of her 33-year-old daughter’s liver (right hemi-liver).
“The four critical surgeries, performed on two donors and two receivers, required meticulous preparation, coordination, and management of pre-and post-operative care, concluding an innovative program for multidisciplinary medical, surgical, and nursing expertise that began in 2019 at the National Institute of Oncology, affiliated with Rabat’s CHU,” the hospital’s statement read.
“The use of living-related donors provides a crucial alternative for patients on the liver transplant waiting list in Morocco, particularly in selected cases where [the criteria of] biological compatibility, anatomical compatibility, and medical-legal validation are met,” CHU concluded.