A city hospital had to run helter-skelter for 12 hours to find a recipient for a cadaver donor on Sunday. The lack of a formal registry of patients in the city requiring liver transplants forced the hospital to finally give it away to a patient on the waiting list of Mumbai’s zonal transplant co-ordination committee.

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The liver was collected at 1 am on Monday by a team of Thane’s Jupiter Hospital.

On Saturday, a 30-year-old man, who suffered hypertensive intracranial bleeding after a road accident was declared brain-dead at the hospital, said medical superintendent Dr Sujata Mallik. After 24 hours, the family consented to donate the patient’s liver and two kidneys. The two kidneys were given to a 35-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman suffering from renal failure. However, even 12 hours after the liver was retrieved, the hospital couldn’t find a recipient.

“We have a dedicated liver transplant centre and trained surgeons. Yet we couldn’t do the liver transplant. The reason is that there isn’t awareness in people that liver transplants can be done in our city. Liver failure patients from Pune are wait-listed with hospitals in other cities,” said Bhomi Bhote, chief executive officer, Ruby Hall Clinic.

Intensivist Dr Kapil Zirpe said, “We need to have awareness about liver donations as with kidney donations. Our city has a waiting list of 250 patients for kidneys. When there is a donor, we cross-check blood samples and find 10 matches. But when it came to liver, we hardly have five or six possible recipients and to find a match is very difficult in such a small patients’ pool.”