Covid-19: Chennai hospital creates bubble to perform living donor kidney transplant surgery

CHENNAI: Doctors in the Madras Medical Mission has created a ‘transplant bubble’ to perform a living donor kidney transplant in the midst of the second wave of Covid-19.
In a release, consultant Dr Rajeevalochana said they had created a transplant bubble where the entire team taking care of both the donor and the recipient, which is a team of 40, were tested a day before and the daily nursing staff were isolated to decrease the exposure. “Being a highly sensitized recipient, extra immunosuppressant was needed and pre-transplant plasmapheresis was done. The donor and the recipient were tested twice a week apart with both nasopharyngeal RT-PCR and a screening HRCT,” the doctor said.
“Once we entered the bubble, no other person was allowed in it and the recipient was discharged after a week with a well-functioning graft. They will be in-home isolation with regular online consults to ensure proper follow up,” the doctor added.
The hospital designed, planned and executed the transplant bubble under constant supervision.
“At present, 1.3 lakh patients are on dialysis in India. The estimated kidney transplant in India is around 2.2 lakh and 7,500 kidney transplants were performed in 250 transplant centres in India,” Dr S Saravanan, vascular and transplant surgeon, director-Institute of Kidney Disease, Urology and Organ Transplantation, the Madras Medical Mission.
He added that the second wave had made transplant a challenge and that patients cannot be left waiting on long term dialysis.