Hyderabad: The Virinchi Hospitals said its doctors had performed a kidney transplantation against all odds, and the patient was being discharged with normal kidney functioning within two weeks.
Doctors performed an ABO incompatible kidney transplantation — where the blood groups of the donor and recipient are different — in a patient with end stage kidney disease due to a condition called thrombotic microangiopathy. This was the first case to be managed effectively at low cost and with excellent graft outcome and represents a significant milestone in the field of kidney disease treatment, the hospital said.
It said the complexity of TMA, which can arise from various causes, necessitates careful evaluation and management to minimise the risk of recurrence post-transplant. This complexity increases manifold in cases where ABO incompatibility exists between the donor and recipient.
Virinchi Hospitals said that its utilisation of plasma exchange sessions and rituximab was a cost effective way for management of post-transplant recurrence. The only other reported case worldwide was from the UK, where eculizumab was used. Eculizumab is not available in India and it needs to be given at regular intervals life-long.
The approximate annual cost of eculizumab treatment is around Rs.1.2 crore in the first year and about Rs.75 lakh per year from second year post transplant onwards.
