KOCHI: Five patients who recently recovered from COVID-19 underwent successful kidney transplantation at a private hospital in Kochi. All the patients are doing well after the surgeries, a release from the VPS Lakeshore Hospital here said.
"Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in the state, organ transplantation surgeries were postponed because of the high risks involved. Performing it in patients who just recovered from the viral infection was even rarer. Considering the life-threatening situation of patients, after a thorough and complete evaluation, Lakeshore Hospital went ahead and successfully performed kidney transplantation in the patients who recently recovered from COVID-19," the release said.
There was an almost complete lack of data regarding the safety of transplantation in patients who had recently recovered from COVID-19. It was also not clear how long the coronavirus will survive in the body after the patient recovers from the illness and whether immunosuppressive medications might flare up the disease. Thus, the surgeries were performed after waiting for a minimum period of 12 weeks after their recovery from COVID-19.
“All the patients tested negative for the virus thrice by RT PCR and all the relevant investigations were done to ensure that they were completely fit and we also transplanted kidneys from four donors who had recent COVID-19 infection and recovered from it after a minimum period of four weeks,” said Dr Abi Abraham, director of nephrology, VPS Lakeshore Hospital.
In addition to Dr Abi Abraham, other doctors who were part of the transplant team included Dr Jithin. S. Kumar, Dr Karthik Ganesh, Dr Sunitha Simon from Nephrology and Dr George P Abraham, Chief Renal Transplant Surgeon and Dr Datson George from Urology.