Mamta Sethi, mother to 5-year old Paridhi, donated 20% of her liver to save her daughter's life

Find out more about live organ donation and this rare liver transplant which was the first in the country,

A Mumbai woman donated a part of her liver to save the life of her five-year-old daughter and cure her of liver and associated lung failure, doctors said on Wednesday. The rare liver transplant, which doctors at Medanta - The Medicity in the National Capital Region (NCR) said was the first in the country, was performed on Paridhi Sethi, after her mother Mamta Sethi, 40, consented to donate 20 percent of her own liver. After the complex and dangerous surgery, the little Paridhi has been cured of an accompanying lung failure too, said Medanta's chief liver transplant surgeon A.S. Soin. Medanta's director of Children's Liver Diseases and Transplantation Neelam Mohan said Paridhi suffered from jaundice and its complications since birth for which she was operated when she was barely 10 months old, but the operation was not successful. (Read: Planning to donate your organs? Here are 10 things you should know)

The condition of the Borivali resident studying in Class 1 deteriorated with life-threatening liver infections, lung complications, leading to eight prolonged bouts of hospitalisation. My husband Nitin and I had given up all hopes of getting Paridhi well after doctors in Mumbai rejected her case as 'far too advanced' for a liver transplant. Around three months ago, Medanta offered to try and save her though it would be an extremely high-risk procedure due to her low oxygen state, said Mamta. Though the hospital has taken up similar milder cases of hepatopulmonary syndrome in which liver failure affects circulation in lung and in extreme cases leads to lung failure, Paridhi was the first of such 50 percent advanced case, said Soin. (Read: 80 members from this family in Maharashtra have pledged to donate their organs)

She now breathes normally without extra oxygen, and will grow like a normal child and live a healthy life. She was easier to handle at Medanta owing to its strong multidisciplinary expertise, said Medanta CMD Naresh Trehan. Liver transplant is complex and required perfect functioning of all other organs with the possibility of Paridhi not making it for various probable reasons, necessitating the medical team to do a bloodless, zero-error, quick surgery, not allowing blood pressure fluctuations, and with 100 percent oxygen support, he said. After correcting her low oxygen level state and remaining on nitric oxide, high external oxygen, ventilator support and a temporary breathing route for nearly a month, Paridhi finally returned home 33 days after the surgery to join her nine-year-old elder sister. (Read: An organ donor and the Delhi police give two kidney failure patients a new life)