GLOBAL MILESTONE IN THE FIELD OF ROBOTIC SURGERYWORLD'S FIRST AND THE YOUNGEST CHILD TO HAVE ROBOTIC LIVER TRANSPLANT SURGERY (RECIPIENT OPERATION)

Rela Hospital, a globally renowned leader in liver transplant surgery, has achieved a historic milestone by becoming the first hospital in the world to perform a robotic liver transplant on a five-year-old child. This makes the child the youngest recipient of a robotic liver transplant globally, marking a major advancement in both paediatric and robotic surgery.

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The patient (recipient), a five-year-old boy, was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition called Urea Cycle Defect, in which the liver cannot properly process proteins from food, leading to a harmful buildup of ammonia in the blood—a condition that can severely affect the brain. A liver transplant offered a definitive cure. The surgery proceeded smoothly without any complications, and the child was discharged within a week. In contrast, the conventional approach typically requires a hospital stay of 14 to 21 days.

The fact that the robotic surgery was performed on a child makes this achievement even more significant, as pediatric bodies offer far less space than adults', posing greater challenges for the insertion and maneuvering of robotic instruments. Remarkably, even the procedure to harvest a portion of the liver from a living donor was carried out using robotic assistance. The donor also had a brief hospital stay and was discharged within five days.