Indian doctors carry out pioneering robotic liver transplant

Indian doctors on Thursday claimed that they had carried out a pioneering robotic liver transplant operation on a four-year-old child and his uncle donor for the first time in the country. A team at Medanta Medicity hospital in Gurgaon, some 30 kilometres from the Indian capital, said that it performed the surgery last month using the Da-Vinci robot on 36-year-old Rahmatullah who donated 20 percent of his liver to his nephew Ziad who had liver cancer due to a rare genetic disorder. \"Robotic surgery is usually performed for other operations like kidney, heart and gynaecological operations. But its use in this liver transplant not only increased the precision, but encouraged the donor by reducing surgery related troubles,\" team leader Dr. A.S. Soin told media. Some 1.5 million rupees (30,000 U.S. dollars) was raised through charity for the operation on Ziad suffering from tyrosinemia, a disease where the liver is unable to digest proteins. It later developed into liver cancer. \"The donor in a liver transplant undergoes the surgery only for saving someone\'s life. A robotic surgery encouraged his uncle for the donation as it has greater precision and a mere three to four inches scar,\" Dr. Soin said.