Pune: Defying odds, man’s kidney gives new lease of life to wife with different blood group
Pune: Defying odds, man’s kidney gives new lease of life to wife with different blood group
The 40-year-old homemaker was suffering from a series of severe health issues since 2015.
August 8, 2024
Despite challenges of a different blood group and triple renal arteries, the 43-year-old man was able to donate his kidney and save his wife.
The rare and challenging transplant was performed by a team of doctors at Pune’s Manipal hospital, Baner, on July 18, ending her 9-year-old struggle. Dr Dharaskar and nephrologist Dr Tarun Jeloka, along with their team, successfully performed the kidney transplant.
Meticulous planning and drug use, however, helped doctors to not just perform the transplant surgery, but also prevent organ rejection by the recipient’s body, a major concern in such cases.
The 40-year-old homemaker had been suffering from a series of severe health issues since 2015. The woman was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (an auto-immune disease) and lupus nephritis (a kidney disease) in 2015. Besides, hypertension in the woman remained uncontrolled in spite of trying five different types of medications.
In 2020, the woman’s health deteriorated further with the onset of herpes zoster and diabetes.
Herpes zoster is a viral infection that causes an outbreak of a painful rash or blisters on the skin. By April 2021, she had developed early signs of kidney failure, which rapidly progressed, culminating in the need for dialysis by 2023.
As her health condition continued to deteriorate, doctors advised an urgent kidney transplant. This is when her husband offered to donate one of his kidneys.
When the couple’s blood was tested, it was found that the husband had an AB-positive blood group, while that of the wife was A-positive. Besides, the husband had triple renal arteries, a rare anatomy occurring in only 10% of the population. However, they defied all the odds and his wife is now steadily recovering.
To overcome the challenge of mismatched blood groups, Dr Jeloka said that they performed the transplant using a special protocol for incompatible blood types. To reduce the risk of rejection, they gave the patient a monoclonal antibody medication two weeks before the transplant, followed by additional medications a week before.
The donor was discharged within seven days after the surgery, while the recipient was discharged within nine days of the procedure. Both the donor and recipient are stable, doctors said.
