Hospital in Delhi conducts challenging auto-kidney transplant

The auto-transplant means transplanting one organ from one place to another in the same human being.
Image used for representational purposes only
Image used for representational purposes only

NEW DELHI: In a life-saving operation, doctors at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi saved a patient by performing a unique auto-kidney transplant in which the doctors reconstructed 25 centimetres of damaged ureter using the wall of urinary bladder.

The auto-transplant means transplanting one organ from one place to another in the same human being.
The Urology and Kidney Transplant department of the hospital had received a patient in June from Punjab. The 29-year-old man had a history of a stone in the left ureter — the pipe that connects the kidneys to the urinary bladder — and was operated on for a rare condition by a local doctor wherein the 20-25 centimetre long ureter also came out with the stone during the surgery.

The man was then shifted to Sir Ganga Ram. When the surgery was taking place, doctors noticed that while the left kidney was fine, it seemed to be just lying around without any ureter connecting it to the bladder. “In a normal patient there is one kidney on the left and one on the right side and two ureters connecting these kidneys to the bladder. But in this case, we were surprised to see the left kidney lying alone without any connection with the bladder,” said Dr Vipin Tyagi, senior consultant, department of urology and kidney transplant at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

Ideally, the kidneys that are placed on the left and right sides of the body are connected to the bladder through the ureters. But when the ureter came out along with the stone, doctors had to perform a unique procedure where the left kidney was removed from its spot and placed beside the right kidney. Dr Sudhir Chadha, co-chairperson, the department of urology at the hospital said that the options before them were either to remove the kidney or re-make the missing connection between kidney and bladder.

“Since the patient was young and the intestine is not the ideal substitute for the ureter reconstruction. We decided to perform ‘auto-kidney transplant’ which means in this patient taking the normal kidney out from the left side and bring it as close to the bladder on the right side and connecting it with blood vessels going from the abdomen to the right leg,” added Dr Tyagi.

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