Liver on the line... Doctors use Bengaluru Metro to beat city's weekend traffic and save life
It was a first-of-its-kind operation in the tech capital and only the second in the country.
The mission unfolded Friday night, when a liver retrieved from a 24-year-old accident victim had to be urgently delivered from a hospital in Whitefield to another in Rajarajeshwarinagar (off Mysuru Road), a distance of about 30km. Under normal circumstances, this journey by road would have taken at least two hours in the city's notorious evening traffic.
But for a critically ill patient battling severe hepatitis-related liver failure, time was a luxury he didn't have.
At 8.38pm, an ambulance carrying the organ and a team of seven medical personnel, including a doctor, from Vydehi Hospital arrived at Whitefield Metro station. There, BMRCL staff and an assistant security officer (ASO) facilitated swift clearance, documentation, and security checks. Escalators and lifts were kept clear, and BMRCL's operations and security teams worked in tandem to ensure not a second was lost.
By 8.42pm, the team boarded a Metro train. A coach was reserved for the organ and the medical staff, who embarked on their 32-station journey. At 9.48pm, the train reached RR Nagar station, where another ASO and Metro staff received the team. An ambulance was already waiting at the station. The liver was rushed to Sparsh Hospital, where a high-stakes transplant surgery began.
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Dr Mahesh Gopasetty, head of liver transplant and HPB surgery at Sparsh Hospital, said, "A road trip for transporting the organ might have taken over three hours because of the Friday evening congestion.
Time was crucial. If we had taken the road, the organ might have been wasted. Metro rail gave us the fastest and safest option."
The overnight surgery was successfully completed by 3am and the patient, who had been waiting over two months for a suitable donor, has been declared stable and is under post-operative care.
According to BMRCL, the entire operation was executed following protocols laid out by the ministry of housing and urban affairs.
The event marks a major milestone in urban medical logistics, as BMRCL confirmed this was only the second time in India that a Metro train was used to transport an organ for transplant. In Jan this year, Hyderabad Metro created a green corridor for transporting a donor's heart, covering a distance of 13km.
According to doctors, vital organs such as heart, liver, kidneys and corneas from a brain-dead patient remain viable only for 6-12 hours during normal conditions. Every minute saved during transportation boosts transplant success, they added.
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