Coimbatore: Two hospitals in Coimbatore have collaboratively performed the country's first-ever inter-hospital swap liver transplant, giving a new lease of life to two patients suffering from end-stage liver disease. GEM Hospital Coimbatore was also the first in India to perform laparoscopic living donor surgery in 2017.
The complex procedure was successfully executed through a joint effort between GEM Hospital and Sri Ramakrishna Hospital in Coimbatore, marking a historic medical feat that required meticulous planning right from the stage of patient evaluation, donor-recipient matching, comprehensive pre-operative optimisation and unprecedented inter-institutional cooperation.
The patients, a 59-year-old man from Salem admitted to GEM Hospital and a 53-year-old man from Tiruppur admitted to Sri Ramakrishna Hospital, were both in dire need of liver transplants. Their respective wives were willing to donate, but blood group incompatibility ruled out direct donation. In a rare stroke of opportunity, doctors identified that a 'swap transplant where the donor of each patient gives to the other, was the only viable solution. Finally, the surgery was simultaneously performed at both hospitals on 3rd July 2025.
Dr. Anand Vijay, Liver Transplant Surgeon at Gem Hospital, speaking about the swap, said, "This is the first time we have done the first successful liver transplant swap in India, that is in hospital. Usually, the liver transplant happens in the same hospital. Both the two donors and all the recipients walked home comfortably on the 10th post-op day. Both patients are doing well, so this is. First of its kind, so I think this liver transplant might open a forum so that a lot of transplants can happen in the future, and the waiting time for the donor liver will reduce, and the outcomes will be better." Unlike conventional living donor liver transplantation, where a relative donates directly to the patient, a swap transplant enables patients who do not have a compatible donor within their own family to exchange donors with another family in a similar situation. This approach expands the donor pool and offers new hope to patients with end-stage liver disease who would otherwise remain on long waiting lists or have no viable curative treatment option.
Dr. R Jayapal, Liver Transplant Surgeon at Sri Ramakrishna Hospital, said, "The planning for intra-hospital swap started with the patient's initial visit where both the doctor's team discussed about the possibility of doing this in a hospital swap transplant, matching their groups, matching their liver volume and the liver quality." "During the day of transplantation, we also coordinated simultaneously at multiple places with a real-time relay of information between both teams at hospitals, and then we were able to complete the procedure well, and both patients got discharged successfully," he added.
What makes this case historic is not just the medical complexity, but that the swap occurred across two different hospitals, a scenario never before attempted in India for liver transplants.
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