In a history of sorts for the Government General Hospital in its 175th year celebrations, surgeons transplanted three cadaveric kidneys on as many recipients, with three teams working over five-six hours.
Venkatesan (29) and Parthiban (42) had been admitted to the hospital after sustaining injuries in road traffic accidents, and declared ‘brain dead’ on Friday. With their families consenting to donating the organs, the Transplant Co-ordinator’s office got to work to distribute the organs to benefit patients on the organ-recipient list.
Three of the kidneys were used at the GH itself on young patient recipients, two women, aged 19 and 29 and a man aged 35.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Conveniently, it was an elective theatre holiday at the GH, so for the first time, three renal transplants happened one after the other at the hospital.” It may even be a record of sorts in the field of organ transplantation, according to J. Amalorpavanathan, Co-ordinator.
The fourth kidney was sent to Stanley Government Hospital where it was used on a 24 year-old man with renal failure. All four corneas were sent to the Government Eye Hospital in Egmore. As for the two hearts, matching recipients could not be found within the state or even in South India.
With the time running out for heart transplantation, authorities decided to harvest the heart valves from both donors and store them for use later.
ADVERTISEMENT
The valves were accordingly stored at Global Hospitals.
First time
Dr. Amalorpavanathan said it was again for the first time in Tamil Nadu that the bulk of the organs went to the government sector where they were used immediately.
“Since both the cadavers became available in the Government Hospital, we decided to give the public sector the priority in distribution of organs.”
He also apportioned some of the credit for the day’s successes to Veena, a grief counsellor from MOHAN Foundation who had been working since Friday to convince the family of the brain dead patients that organ donation was an option they could choose.