Hyderabad celebrates 25 years of first organ transplant

HYDERABAD: City doctors have celebrated the silver jubilee of Hyderabad’s first organ transplant. It was in July 1996 that a kidney was transplanted in a patient from a cadaver. Only two cities — Chennai and Delhi — had the facility then. Dr KS Nayak, senior organ transplant specialist, who conducted the first organ transplant in Hyderabad, recalled that it was a Herculean task to obtain the necessary permissions from the government to conduct organ transplant as there were no guidelines in those days.
“We have completed 25 years of first cadaver organ transplantation in the undivided Andhra Pradesh in 1996. It was among the first three done in India and our efforts paved the way for the formation of Jeevandan subsequently,” Dr Nayak, who is currently associated with Virinchi Hospitals, said. He said there were no proper guidelines to define brain death during that period. Special permissions were obtained from the director of medical education, police and authorities concerned to proceed with the pathbreaking surgery.
Two kidneys from a braindead donor were successfully transplanted into two patients with end stage kidney failure. Later, within a year, two more such transplants were done by Dr Nayak and his team leading to awareness among the public. The government streamlined the process and came up with the Human Organ Transplantation Act. Hyderabad has also the distinction of India’s first simultaneous heart and kidney transplantation.