AIIMS Delhi performs first dual kidney transplant in 51-year-old woman

New Delhi [India], March 16 (ANI): The Department of Surgical Disciplines and Department of Nephrology of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi in collaboration with ORBO performed the first dual kidney transplant of a 51-year-old lady on December 22, last year.
Additional Professor of Surgery AIIMS, New Delhi, Dr Asuri Krishna who performed the surgery said that the donor was a 78-year-old lady who was admitted to AIIMS Trauma Centre on December 19 with a severe head injury from falling a fall from stairs and was declared brain dead and her family consented for organ donation.
And a 51-year-old woman who had both kidney failure and was on dialysis. The woman needed a kidney, after which the doctors decided that both the kidneys of the brain-dead 78-year-old woman could be transplanted to the 51-year-old woman, for this a team of doctors was prepared.
Dr Asuri said that the recipients of both kidneys were not working hence she was on dialysis. During this transplant, the two new kidneys were placed in a heterotropic manner without removing her native kidneys. Thus now the patient has four kidneys.
When asked about the challenges he faced during the surgery Dr Asuri Krishna said that the major challenge was placing two kidneys on the patient's right side.
The challenge was that because of donor extreme age (She was the second oldest organ donor at AIIMS, New Delhi) her single kidney would not have been sufficient for a patient on dialysis. We had to clamp the major artery and vein of the patient to join the 1st kidney and then place the second kidney below it. Therefore, a decision was taken to use both kidneys in a single recipient," he added.
The recipient was a 51-year-old lady on dialysis and the donor was 78-year-old lady who was admitted to AIIMS.
He further asserted that the patient is doing well now and all the doctors are monitoring her.
"The patient is doing well. She is off haemodialysis and her kidney is functioning normally. These patients require closer monitoring and have been doing well so far," Dr Krishna said.
The surgery was carried out on December 22, 2023, by the transplant team of surgery unit 4 Dr Asuri Krishna, Dr Sushant Soren and Professor V Seenu.
"Both the kidneys were placed on the right side of the recipient one on top of the other. The recipient had an uneventful recovery with both the kidneys performing well following the surgery," he added.
The one-of-a-kind surgery is a great example of using limited resources to bridge the huge demand and supply gap that exists for organs in India by using the organs from an elderly donor which usually would have been rejected. This was a collaborative effort between the department of surgical disciplines.
Department of Nephrology (Professor Dipankar Bhowmik and Professor Sandeep Mahajan) and ORBO ( professor ArtI Vij and transplant coordinators Balram). (ANI)