A six-year-old boy, who suffered an acute kidney injury possibly caused by a snake bite almost a year ago, underwent renal transplantation at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH) with his 32-year-old mother being the donor.
A multidisciplinary team of doctors from Nephrology, Urology, Vascular Surgery and Anaesthesia departments of the RGGGH and the Nephrology department of the Institute of Child Health was involved in the treatment of the child.
According to doctors, the boy, a Class I student, was drowsy when his mother returned from work. It was said that a snake was spotted in the vicinity. He went into acute kidney shutdown and was treated elsewhere.
Doctors said that snake bite-associated kidney injury was one of the major issues and had varying degrees of involvement. While a majority of the patients recovered, some progressed to chronic kidney injury without recovery.
The boy was on dialysis for eight months. Almost a month-and-a-half ago, he underwent a kidney transplant. He was on immunosuppressants and graft function was normal. The boy was set to return to school, the doctors said.
Kidney transplantation in children had its own set of challenges, one being blood vessel size disparity between the adult and child. For this, the Department of Vascular Surgery was roped in for the surgery. As the immune system was robust in children, the risk of rejection was higher when compared to adults, a senior doctor said.
E. Theranirajan, dean of RGGGH, said 1,540 renal transplants were performed at RGGGH so far. “Recently, our doctors performed a renal transplant on a person living with HIV/AIDS, with the father being the donor,” he said.
