Yesterday, the first chain kidney transplant in our country was performed at the Department of General and Transplant Surgery of the Infant Jesus Clinical Hospital in Warsaw. Three pairs participated in the procedure. All performed operations – three donations and three implants – lasted a total of 12 hours.
We talk about chain transplantation when the procedure involves at least three couples. It is carried out in a situation where someone wants to donate a kidney to a loved one, but due to tissue incompatibility or an inappropriate blood group, direct surgery cannot be performed. A couple with a similar problem are then sought. In this way, a cross-transplant was performed in Poland in February – with the participation of two couples. Now, however, such a situation was not possible and it was necessary to match as many as three unrelated donors and recipients.
One of the people who participated in the procedure is a son who wanted to donate a kidney to his mother, who suffers from acute organ failure. However, this was not possible due to tissue incompatibility. The man’s kidney went to the patient who could not get it from his sister because she has a different blood type. The woman’s kidney, in turn, was given to the patient who was originally supposed to receive it from her husband, but there is also an immunological incompatibility between them. Her husband’s organ went to the mother of the first donor.
The operations were very successful. For two samples, minimally invasive 3D laparoscopy was enough. Only in one case was it necessary to open the integuments of the body. There were no complications during the procedures and the organs had already started working. At the moment, six patients are monitored. It will turn out in the next few days when they can be released from the hospital.
Polish law does not allow altruistic donated kidneys to a stranger. To become a donor, you must be related or closely related to the patient in need of a transplant (for example, through marriage). In the light of the law, a cross or chain transplant is therefore a prohibited procedure. Fortunately, in such situations, special permission can be requested from the court and the Ethics Committee of the National Transplant Council. After the authorization has been issued, the operation can be carried out.
Chain transplants worldwide have been successfully carried out for over 20 years. It was first done in 1991 by a team of doctors from South Korea. The record transplant in terms of the number of couples who took part in it was carried out in the United States – there were as many as nine of them!
Such procedures give hope to patients whose relatives would like to give them a kidney, but for medical reasons it is impossible. Let us hope that now the chain transplant will also become popular in Poland.