Lucknow: Student donates liver to save cancer-stricken dad

LUCKNOW: A father is said to be a son’s first hero. In this heart-warming tale from Madiaon, it is a son who got to wear the hero’s cape.
Akash Soni (21) donated a part of his liver to gift his doting dad Vijay Shankar Soni (48) a second life, the successful transplant on Friday aptly taking place two days before Father’s Day. The patient and the donor are expected to be happily reunited at home three weeks from now.
Sources at King George’s Medical University (KGMU), where the 14-hour surgery took place, said Vijay Shankar was diagnosed with liver cancer a month ago when he visited the OPD with symptoms such as loss of appetite and chronic upper abdominal pain.The family’s hopes took a severe beating when doctors disqualified Vijay Shankar’s wife and elder son as donors owing to “unfit medical conditions”. Akash, a first-year college student, stepped up to the plate and offered to donate his liver. Luck smiled. Doctors found him to be a good match. A team of experts from KGMU and Max hospital, New Delhi, pulled off the complicated surgery, which began at 5am on Friday and was the third such transplant in the history of KGMU’s gastro-enterology department. First transplant took place in March.
The KGMU liver transplant team was led by head of surgical gastro-enterology professor Abhijit Chandra and comprised three gastro-enterologists, Dr Vishal Gupta, Dr Vivek Gupta and Dr Pradeep Joshi; five anaesthetists led by prof GP Singh and Dr Mohammed Parvez; four radiologists and three microbiologists among others. The three-member Max team was headed by Dr Subhash Gupta, a liver transplant surgeon.