Expert nephrologists from the Tokyo Women's Medical College, Japan recently offered training to the doctors of the Madras Institute of Nephrology, wing of the Chennai based Vijaya Health Centre to perform kidney transplantations across blood groups, a relatively new procedure.

According to Dr Ravichandran, director of the Madras Institute of Nephrology, kidney transplantations are performed only when the blood groups of donors and the patient matches, in almost all hospitals in the country. In the modern procedure introduced by the Japanese doctors, antibodies of the blood groups A and B are removed from the patient before the transplantation using a method called Double Filtration Plasma Theresis, performed several times until antibodies against the blood group completely disappears. Only then kidney transplantation is done on the patient.

Currently about one lakh patients affected with nephrological diseases are waiting for kidney transplantation mainly due to non-availability of the same blood group kidneys and other reasons. The new procedure, though expensive by at least 50 per cent in comparison to an ordinary transplantation, could benefit numerous patients, said Dr Ravichandran.

Dr Hiroshi Toma and Dr Kanuzunari from the Tokyo Women's Medical College taught a team of nephrologists at a workshop, to perform the procedure, and the results were found to be similar to the kidney transplantations done on blood group matched transplantation. Dr Hiroshi Toma, who has performed over 1000 kidney transplantations, also taught the doctors to remove the tumour-affected parts of kidneys, instead of the present style of removing the affected kidney.