Child gets mother's kidney in a rare transplant

Blood vessels of adult kidney are large so its hard to place in kids

But a team of doctors in MIOT Hospitals in Chennai has successfully implanted the kidney of an adult woman on a low-weight child on October 14, in what is being called a rare medically defiant feat.

Till his mother’s kidney was implanted on him, cure was almost ruled out for seven-year-old Sanjey, as he was just about 15 kg. The boy was for long suffering from a kidney problem.

Kidney transplants in children weighing less than 15 kg is almost impossible, according to doctors. Medically, such transplants in kids are fraught with difficulties and not many would take risks, Dr P V A Mohandas, noted orthopedic and managing director of the MIOT Hospitals, explained. Listing out some of the factors, he said technically the kidney of an adult was hard to be placed in a child.

Blood vessels of the adult kidney are much larger and can hardly be symmetrical with that of a child. The fitting gets all the more harder, even if the biological possibility is waiting to take shape.

Further, the adult kidney in a child could take up 150 ml of blood from the kid’s normal blood circulation. Medically, this could trigger ‘haemodynamic problems’ to the child, Dr Mohandas explained.

Post-operative management of the operated child gets equally difficult and rejection rates are more in children than in adults, he said. Transplant in children in that weight group is also very low world-over, especially in India. However, all these obstacles were overcome in Sanjey’s case, with a team of paediatric anaesthetist and ‘intensivist’ being made part of the regular kidney transplantation team, led by Dr Rajan Ravichandran.

The critically ill boy, who was managing with ‘peritoneal dialysis’, got his mother’s kidney, Dr Mohandas said. After some anxious moments, the boy was kept on ventilator, post-surgery, for 48 hours.

“Fortunately, the kidney picked up well, and the child improved progressively,” said Dr Mohandas. It is two months now since the transplant was done and the child is doing “remarkably well,” he added.