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Department of Hepato Pancreatico Biliary (HPB) Surgery and Transplants

The liver, gall bladder & bile duct and pancreas are among the most important of the organs in the human digestive system. These three organs act like a team in helping the body perform myriad functions ranging from storing and using glucose and fat, producing proteins, detoxifying the toxins and drugs, excretion of the waste products, maintain blood clotting mechanism and help in digestion of food and blood sugar control.

Liver is the metabolic power-house of the body and serious diseases affecting the liver can cause almost all of the body systems to come to a standstill. The liver happens to bear the brunt of undesirable side effects of the life style changes of the present day. Excess calorie intake, sedentary life style, excess alcohol consumption and Hepatitis B and C infection can lead on to irreversible damage to liver called ‘cirrhosis’.

Liver is an organ with most abundant blood supply and surrounded by major blood vessels going to and from the heart; in fact the liver has three different types of blood vessels crisscrossing it making it a maze of blood vessels. For the same reason, previously there had been reluctance among the surgeons to boldly perform surgery on the liver. With the improvement in understanding the anatomy of these organs, more surgical experience and availability of amazing surgical operating instruments, the chance for cure by surgery for liver cancer is a reality now. Liver transplantation is now being successfully used to cure those patients with irreversible liver damage (cirrhosis) and with many in-operable liver cancers.

Gall bladder is the site for stone disease which is one of the most common reasons for need to consult a surgeon. The cancers of the gall bladder and the bile ducts are remarkable for being silent till the very advanced stage, when cure becomes improbable. In fact the symptom of ‘pain’ that most patients’ think of as the only symptom of serious disease is summarily absent tills the very end stage. But the silver lining is that now these cancers can be cured when detected in a reasonably early stage, i.e. at a stage when they have not yet given troublesome symptoms or only when ‘warning signs’ are present.

Pancreatic diseases are also equally serious and complicated due to the fact that the organ is the source of very strong secretions that have the ability to digest most of the food items that we eat and hence the surrounding organs and blood vessels in the disease state. The excess alcohol consumption can lead to irreparable damage to the pancreas (acute and chronic pancreatitis) as well. Pancreatic cancers which were thought to be incurable a few decades ago are now being routinely cured with a complex but now a standardized surgery called ‘the Whipple’s procedure’. In fact the awareness about the cancer of the pancreas has been significantly improved after Steve Jobs the iconic co-founder of the Apple Corporation was afflicted with and later succumbed to the disease.

Why Hepato-Pancreatico-Biliary (HPB) Surgery & Transplants?

The modern day mantra for improving the results of medical treatment is ‘sub-specialization’: wherein a dedicated team focuses on a particular group of diseases only so as to deliver improved patient outcomes. So, in order to achieve that aim, it is essential to have a team of experts focus solely on the HPB surgical conditions. Only a few centers in India have this kind of departments dedicated to dealing solely with HPB diseases, rather most of the leading hospitals still have these disease being dealt by the general or gastrointestinal surgeons only.

MIOT International is launching its specialized HPB surgical & transplantation services dedicated to the comprehensive and state–of-the-art treatment for the entire gamut of diseases affecting the HPB system. The latest medical technological and research advances are being brought in from around the world for the benefit of our patient population under one roof and in their neighborhood. The service plans to expand on to living donor (split) liver transplantation, pancreas and islet cell transplantation in the very near future. The awareness about the diseases affecting the HPB system and the fact that they have to be caught early for the treatment to be beneficial is almost negligible in our population and it will be one important task of this new service to spread the awareness about the diseases and help the public catch the disease early through proactive medical surveillance in the persons at risk.

Coupled with the MIOT philosophy of ‘Putting Patients First’, this specialty department would strive to serve the patients with HPB diseases with the utmost humane touch and best technology available to make sure the cure from HPB diseases, especially the cancers, is a reality for our patients.