Paired Kidney transplants save two lives

Swapan Kumar Basu and Ratan Das, strangers till a few weeks back, got a fresh lease of life in a rare case of spousal paired kidney transplants at a Wockhardt Hospital and Kidney Institute at kolkata.

Basu, 59, had suffered renal failure and was undergoing dialysis for the last three years.

Doctors had advised a kidney transplant but the blood group of his family members did not match with his.His wife Suchitra, 57, wanted to donate one of her kidneys to him, but her blood group (B negative) didn’t match his.

“I didn’t want to buy a kidney from a commercial donor and there seemed to be no hope for me,” recalled Basu, who was undergoing treatment at Wockhardt Hospitals and Kidney Institute.

Meanwhile Mr Ratan Das, a 43-year-old businessman from Howrah, was also undergoing dialysis since November 2008. He was facing a similar problem — his B negative blood group was a mismatch for his wife, Barnali, 35, whose blood group is A positive.

Barnali approached the doctors with a request for paired transplant.

“It was an ideal situation and after getting the necessary clearance from the state health department, we went ahead with the transplants,” said Arup Ratan Dutta, the chief nephrologist at WockhardtHospitals who performed the surgery along with urologist Shivaji Basu and transplant surgeon Sasanka Saha.

The transplants took place on July 28 and the couples are out of hospital. “They can go back to work in three months,” Dutta said. “The transplants saved two families from financial, emotional and physical drain,” he added.

According to doctors, tissue matching, although preferable, is not mandatory because of advanced immuno-suppresive drugs. “Tissue mismatch is not as significant as it used to be. So, the number of spousal donations is going up,” said Dutta.

Urologist Shivaji Basu from Wockhardt hoped this case would motivate others to opt for paired kidney transplants.

Doctors say renal transplant for patients whose blood groups do not match with near relatives becomes a serious problem as cadaver organ transplant is yet to become popular here.

source:Telegraph