Organ donations usually refers only to adults but the kidney of a 14-month-old baby, who was brain-dead, has been donated to a 58-year-old woman in Hyderabad.
Overcoming the grief, the baby’s parents donated the kidney for a woman who was on dialysis for the last seven years. The 58-year-old is also on a pacemaker for a heart problem. The rare surgery was performed at KIMS Hospital, Secunderabad.
As the organs of young children are relatively small, there are complications in implanting them in elderly people. However, in this case it was possible due to the presence of highly skilled doctors, state-of-the-art technology, and incredible equipment.
Consultant Urologist and Renal Transplant Surgeon Dr. Umamaheswara Rao, who led the team that performed the kidney transplant surgery, said that availability is the biggest problem in the matter of organ transplantation.
He said that it is necessary to perform different types of surgeries to save the lives of patients. This surgery is done to overcome all the boundaries like age and size. It gave new hope to the patient’s life. Many aspects had to be carefully considered.
“We have to see the size of the collected kidney and the possibility of the recipient’s body’s acceptance. The kidney grows in the human body until the age of three years. After that, it is fully grown and functional. After the transplantation too, it grows in the body of the recipient. In some cases, when the kidney of a young person is transplanted to an older person, there are problems such as thrombus in the arteries.
“However, in this case, there is no such thing. It is a bold decision to transplant the kidney collected from a small baby to a 58-year-old patient. We have been able to complete this surgery with utmost success with all kinds of precautions,” he said.
The doctor feels that there is a need to raise awareness among the people on organ donation and the family members of the deceased need to be courageous to decide on organ donation.
“That one decision will save many lives. Now research in the medical field is multifold, new techniques have come in to secure organs, and some organisations coordinate organ donations. It is because of such organisations that such lives are being saved. This achievement wouldn’t be possible without the involvement of a team of doctors,” he said.
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