Coimbatore, July 19 -- 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 admit...