Mumbai: A 50-year-old renal failure patient got a new lease of life when his wife donated one of her kidneys to him. But unlike the traditional method of kidney transplantation, Andheri resident C.N. Murlidharan’s transplant was a robot-assisted procedure, the first one to be carried out in Maharashtra.
According to Dr. Inderbir Gill, who heads the Urology and Robotics Department at the Sir H.N. Reliance Hospital and carried out the procedure, robotic surgery allows kidney transplantation to be performed with great precision, minimal blood loss, and a lower chance of post-operative infection. “This is an advanced procedure performed in very few centres in the world,” said Dr. Gill.
While the donor’s kidney was harvested through a minimally invasive procedure by the team of doctors, it is the transplantation of the organ into the recipient that was carried out with the use of a robotic arm.
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Though robot-assisted procedures cost double the regular surgeries, many patients opt for them for speedy recovery. The robot is helmed by a doctor on the surgeon’s console. Given that it is a machine, it provides a 20 to 30 times better view of the operative site than the naked eye, and also has a 360-degree movement.
Mr. Murlidharan said the surgery involved little pain. “I was initially reluctant, but the doctors convinced me about the benefits. I am happy that I went ahead with it,” he said. He had been on dialysis for the past one-and-a-half years.