First recipient of liver transplant from a living donor leaves hospital; ministers visit
The first-ever operation in Greece was performed a few days ago by a team of surgeon Georgios Sotiropoulos with the participation ofhospital German surgeon Dieter Broering.
Eleni Haimalaki, 23, received a part of the liver of her father, 50, at Laiko Hospital. Ministers of Health Adonis Georgiadis, Irini Agapidaki (Alternate), and Marios Themistocleous (Deputy), hospital governor Theofanis Roidis, surgeons, and the parents of the patient, were present during her discharge from hospital.
Georgiadis said that he was very proud the National Health System could carry out such a specialized and difficult transplant operation and proud particularly of Laiko Hospital, which is a university hospital at the University of Athens.
Surgeon Sotiropoulos expressed his appreciation for the trust in him by Eleni and her family for the first-time operation in Greece, and that entire medical and nursing team, particularly as it took place on a holiday and it meant several staff members had to cut their holidays short to participate.
Speaking of Dr Broering, Sotiropoulos said he had invited his colleague because one needs an experienced team in such cases. "The operation is very specialized, even for Germany, where I lived for many years," he said. Of 21 transplant centers in Germany, only 4 carry out liver transplants from a living donor, and for adults in particular, only 2 do so.
As Sotiropoulos explained, "What we did is that the liver - which is a large intra-abdominal organ and we perceive as a single organ - there is a way of dividing it in half, in two pieces, a right one and a left one. In this way, we took the father's liver, which we saw was the best matched, split it in two, took the right lobe - the right liver, in other words - and transplanted it in Eleni after removing her own liver. Therefore, the father has the left piece and the daughter the right one."
