Medwin Hospital, Hyderabad, has successfully performed the first cadaver kidney tranplantation and joined the select group of hospitals doing such transplants in the country. A team of doctors led by Dr Sanjay Sinha transplanted the kidney retrieved from a brain dead person in Warangal in a 48-year-old housewife who was suffering from kidney failure for the last four years.

Disclosing this to newsmen, Dr Sinha, consultant urologist, Dr Ratan Jha, consultant nephrologist, and Lalitha Raghuram from Mohan Foundation, a network of multi-organ harvesting and supplying to the needy on priority basis, said the recipient of the organ was doing well after two weeks of transplant, indicating that the patient had stabilised.

Though they did not name the donor and the recipient, they said the donor was an electrician in Warangal, who suffered severe head injury when he fell down from an electric pole. Five days after the accident, he was declared brain dead. The family members were counselled by the representatives of the Foundation to part with his kidney. After they agreed to donate the kidney, the organ was retrieved at Warangal itself and brought to Hyderabad in special storage bags by road.

The recipient is the wife of a driver in BHEL. She was chosen as per the waiting list and matching. Dr Sinha said she had been surviving for the last one year on haemodialysis without any hope for transplantation as there were no suitable donors in her family. As the cadaver kidney was available, the family was immediately informed and the transplant was made on May 30. He said as the blood vessels of the kidney were joined to the recipient, it immediately turned into healthy pink in colour.

Dr Sinha regretted that despite passage of a legislation in 1995 which clearly defined brain death, cadaver organ transplantations continue to be very few. As against the demand for over one lakh patients who develop kidney failure every year, the total number of cadaver transplants done in the country so far had not crossed 200, he said.

Meanwhile, according to a press release from Global Hospitals, Hyderabad, it had successfully conducted a liver transplantation from a living donor, actually from mother to daughter. In a touching scene at the hospital, mother Dakshina Bhat donated a slice of her liver to save the life of her four-and-a-half-year-old daughter Pranali Bhat who was suffering from auto-immune disorder. She was admitted to the hospital on June 4.

Since it was a complicated procedure the hospital flew down Dr Mohammed Rela of King's College Hospital, London, the Guinness Book of World Records holder for transplantation on a five-day-old baby. The hospital has an understanding with King's College Hospital for the services of eminent organ transplant surgeons to undertake complicated surgeries. Since genetically compatible donor transplant is advisable, the mother readily agreed and was chosen on Dr Rela's advice. It is safe to transplant part of the liver to another since liver has the capacity to regenerate almost 90 % of its original size within two or three weeks. In the transplanted liver also, it grows along with the child.