Bhubaneswar: With the advancement of medical science, the non-thinkable phenomenon of kidney transplant between a donor and a recipient hailing from different blood groups has now become a reality these days.
In the past few years with the advent of qualified and advanced immune suppressive drugs, doctors are now able to perform renal transplants even between two people who do not have same blood group. Earlier, due to higher rejection chances due to non-compatibility, the transplant was almost confined to those having same blood groups.
“It is now possible that a kidney transplant could be done between two people who do not have same blood group. A set of advanced immune-suppressive drugs are now available which can help us in this. Under its absence, several transplant cases could not be taken up due to non-matching of blood groups between interested donors and recipient,” said Dr Sukanta Kishore Das, nephrologist and kidney transplant expert, Bhubaneswar.
Das added that this has given a leap in renal transplant cases as often the interested spouse of renal patient used to fail to donate their organ due to non-compatibility of the blood groups. The good news is that a few select private hospitals in the state have started undertaking such advanced surgeries from their institutions.
As per the treatment regime for such operations termed as ABO incompatible transplantation, the patients who need such transplant and come onboard for such surgeries are required to undergo some blood tests to best identify the way to go forward and the drugs required.
Doctors often conduct blood tests to find out how much antibody the patient has to the donor kidney’s blood type. Later, the process of desensitisation is adopted to remove the existing blood group antibodies and later an intravenous blood product called immunoglobulin is used to turn off the cells in the recipients’ body to make the whole process a success.
The doctors recommend that patients who have Glomerulus Filtration Rate (indicator of renal health) below 15, often referred to as ‘Stage 5’ should opt for kidney transplant which they claim have advanced in terms of their better success rate.
According to nephrologists, kidney transplants can also cost less as compared to prolonged dialysis which often demands frequent visits to the hospitals.
Moreover, the facility of paediatric renal transplant is also offered at select private hospitals
in the City.
Kidney transplants are offered anywhere between Rs 4 lakh-Rs 7 lakh in Bhubaneswar.
