Chennai, August 10(BPNS)

After the third renal transplant surgery a 41-year-old Chennai native has five kidney’s in his body and is doing well. The patient who underwent third renal transplant surgery at Madras Mission Hospital, Chennai had two earlier transplanted kidneys in his body along with his original two kidneys.

This is one of the rarest of procedures conducted on a patient and not common even globally.

The surgery was performed on the patient on July 10 and exactly after one month on his first check-up day, doctor found that he was keeping well, and his transplanted kidney was functioning properly.

The Vascular and  transplant surgeon who performed the surgery on the patient, Dr. Saravanan while speaking to BPNS said, “ There were four challenges in performing this surgery – first a lack of space for the new kidney in the retroperitoneum,  lack of width on the native blood vessels to connect the renal artery and vein,  the bladder is scattered with earlier surgeries and the patient tends to develop a lot of antibodies from the earlier surgeries and plasmapheresis (filtering the blood) has to be performed before the new kidney is placed.”

He also said that the old kidneys are not removed making space for the new one is because the patient could profusely bleed and require blood transfusion and could lead to the production of antibodies and rejection of the new kidney.

The 41 year old patient had hypertension and Chronic Kidney Disorder

( CKD) and had two earlier failed renal transplant surgeries owing to uncontrolled hypertension. The patient had also undergone triple bypass  at the Madras Medical Mission hospital three months before after he was diagnosed with coronary artery disease.

Dr. Saravanan said, “ The kidney was placed high above in the abdominal cavity, right next to the intestine as opposed to the conventional approach. The transperitoneal approach (through the gut), a rare surgery performed, even globally that saved the day for my patient. This is an uncommon surgery and I have to see a paper published on this in India.”