The dying liver was an ugly grey colour, shrivelled and pockmarked with nodules, when the bunch of green-robed surgeons finally cut it loose from the abdomen cavity and put it to one side. They had already worked for hours making sure the blood vessels and bile duct weren't damaged during the extraction, even as they took care to tie up thousands of collateral blood vessels that had sprouted up. For the next couple of hours, while numerous machines checked the body parameters of the patient, sure hands stitched into place a healthy, shiny, reddish-brown, smooth-surfaced liver that was earlier lying in an icebox. Minutes later, the newly sewn liver inside 20-year-old Savitri started functioning. Hours later, as she woke up in the icu, one of the green-robed men bent over her and whispered assuringly: "The operation is done. You did well." Now, more than a fortnight later, Savitri, with her liver functions stable, is already the longest surviving liver transplant patient in the country; and the operation could well become the first successful one.

Dr T.K. Chattopadhyay of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, who headed the operation, says a liver transplant "is the most challenging of all transplants". The surgeon has to make five key connections -- the upper and lower portions of the vena cava, the portal vein, the hepatic artery and the delicate bile duct. Called the chemical factory of the body, the liver is a complex organ with many functions and must work when it's installed, or the patient dies. There is nothing like dialysis to back you up. Yet, in the West, liver transplant success rates are 70 per cent for five years. Doctors say they too can achieve this but need more donors like the one who agreed to give Savitri a new liver. They pin down the success to that family.

It all really started when 36-year-old Arvind Chari, a resident of Delhi, fell into a huge pit dug up for a sewer line near his house. He broke his spine and suffered serious head injuries. After fighting for 10 days to revive him, neurologists in AIIMS realised his brain stem was dead -- more simply, he had irreversible brain damage. He immediately became a potential organ donor.

Chari's wife was counselled by the treating physician and a doctor from hospital administration. Initially, the family refused outright. But later, Chari's wife seemed to change her mind. It was a difficult decision since Chari's parents were not in Delhi and could not be contacted as they were in transit to the capital. "Still she took a brave decision to go ahead and donate organs," said an AIIMS doctor. Savitri, who had been waiting for a transplant for over a year, was chosen as the recipient as she matched Chari's blood group and age was one her side. For her father, it was this and more: "God was on our side."

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