Woman donates kidney to son despite multiple complications

Overcoming multiple abnormalities in both the donor and the receiver, doctors at a city hospital successfully transplanted the kidney of an African woman into her 20-year-old son, offering him a fresh lease of life.
The relieved family members said this was a gift from India on the eve of World Kidney Day tomorrow.
Semou Kante, who had been suffering from chronic kidney failure, got admitted at the BLK Super-Specialty Hospital in the first week of February for kidney transplantation.
"The patient was surviving on dialysis from the past four years and was referred to India as it was not possible to do this transplant in Africa. On evaluation, the ultrasonography showed that the vessels in his lower abdomen were fine and thus we did not visualise any problem during the transplant," said Dr H S Bhatyal, head of the department of Urology and Kidney Transplantation.

The donor for Semou was his mother. His mother had multiple vascular anomalies in the right kidney and she had double ureters in her left kidney.
"Both her kidneys had anomalies. We selected the left kidney which had no vascular anomaly but had two ureters, a rare case, which increases the chances of more uretery complications. As per medical literature 0.6 to 1 per cent people generally have two ureters," said Bhatyal.

However, doctors were yet to come across more complications.
"When we opened up the recipient's right lower abdomen (where normally kidney is positioned in normal condition), we found to our surprise that the pelvic vessels were all unhealthy, partly blocked and completely plastered.

"It was a major challenge before us and we had to resort to an alternative to place this kidney which was a large sized kidney.
"We explored higher up and created extra space for the kidney just below the native right kidney. And the blood vessels of the newly placed kidney were joined to the major vessels of the abdomen (IVC and aorta). Also two ureters were joined together and implanted into the bladder as single ureter," said the doctor.
It took over four hours to perform the entire transplant.
The team collectively was able to perform a successful transplant despite multiple complexities and challenges, informed Dr Bhatyal. The patient will be discharged tomorrow, on World Kidney day, he said.

"He is perfectly fine and able to walk around," said the doctor.