A consensus on prediction and management of small-for-size syndrome in the living-donor liver transplant arrived at an international conference of liver surgeons, hepatologists, liver anaesthesia team and researchers who assembled from across the world, said Mohammed Rela, President, of the International Liver Transplant Society.

The conference proceedings will be used to generate practice guidelines for publication in Transplantation Journal, said Rela, who is also the Chairman of the 450-bed Rela Hospital.

The first International Consensus Conference on Prediction and Management of Small for Size Syndrome in Living-Donor Liver Transplant and the 13th Edition of Master Class in Liver Disease is being held between January 27 and 29.

The conference is jointly organised by the International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS), the International Liver Donor Liver Transplantation Study Group (iLDLT) and the Liver Transplant Society of India (LTSI).

According to Rela, a workshop on robotic donor hepatectomy will be held on January 29, where two robotic living-donor operations will be demonstrated to the conference participants.

"This ground-breaking event has brought together liver transplant society heads from across the world along with more than 150 leading surgeons, hepatologists, liver anaesthesia team and researchers in the field of liver transplantation, sharing the latest advancements, research and best practices in the field," Rela added.

The living-donor transplant was initially small in number and it grew after the Japanese took it up.

A living-donor liver transplant is a surgery in which a portion of the liver from a healthy living person is removed and placed into someone whose liver is no longer working properly.

Specialists in the field acknowledged India's rapid growth in living-donor liver transplants. "Chennai is the Mecca for a liver transplant. We are doing smaller grafts. We came here for a consensus. In Turkey, we do living-donor transplants," said Yaman Toilat.

"Tamil Nadu leads India in this area. At our hospital itself, we perform about 300 liver transplant operations per year," Rela added.

Queried about the impact of COVID-19 on the liver, Toilat told IANS that if the COVID patient was already suffering from liver cirrhosis, the impact will be greater.