According to the National Kidney Foundation, each month, over 3,000 new individuals are added to the kidney waiting list. Every day, 13 individuals die while waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant.
Someone gets added to the kidney transplant waiting list every 14 minutes. 4,761 individuals died while waiting for a kidney transplant in 2014. Another 3,668 patients fell ill and were unable to undergo a kidney transplant.
The initial stage of kidney transplant often poses challenges as finding a suitable donor of the same blood group has become increasingly difficult in today's times.
It should be noted that there are still dozens of kidney patients in need of transplants, but they are unable to receive one since no family member with the same blood group is a match.
Individuals would be able to receive kidney transplants in Jaipur's SMS Hospital even if their donor does not share their blood type. The SMS nephrologists will use the ABO-incompatible transplant procedure for this.
The experts say that long-term efforts and preparations have been made to transplant using this method, and it is anticipated that such a kidney transplant would be carried out within the next 20 to 25 days.
If this is accomplished, SMS will be the first government hospital in the state to perform an ABO-incompatible transplant. For the past eight months, SMS Senior Nephrologists Dr. Dhananjay Agarwal, Dr. Shivam Priyadarshi, and Dr. Vinay Malhotra have been striving to make this method effective, and now there is hope that it will be.
In this method, medications are first given to the patient after admission in order to lower the antibodies. It is carefully monitored to prevent the body from producing any new antibodies.
The donor's kidney is instantly transplanted as soon as the recipient's antibody level drops and reaches the point at which operation is feasible.
At the time of transplant, these antibodies are carefully watched. The goal is to ensure that the blood will accept the kidney from the other blood type both during the transplant and subsequently.
A blood test is performed to determine the concentration of antibodies in the bloodstream in advance of an ABO-incompatible transplant.
