Kashmir’s premier health Institute, Sheri Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Soura in Srinagar performed its first-ever swap kidney transplant.
Officials said that the department of urology and kidney transplant SKIMS achieved a major milestone by performing the swap.
“This is the first swap kidney transplant done in UT of J&K,” said a spokesperson of SKIMS.
SKIMS director Dr Parvaiz Koul complimented Prof Saleem Wani, head of department, Urology and KTU and associate departments for this significant achievement.
“It is a major breakthrough in kidney transplant here and our commitment towards new advances in patient care, “ he said.
Prof Wani while giving details said, “This is landmark surgery done by the SKIMS”.
He said one patient aged 59 years from south Kashmir suffering from diabetes and ESRD on dialysis since November 2022 had a wife as his only kidney donor. However, they had positive CDC crossmatch due to which a kidney transplant was not possible. Another patient from Bandipora aged 33 years with CKD Stage 5 had his mother as the only kidney donor whose blood group did not match which precluded kidney transplant. On swap (donor exchange) both patients received blood group-matched and immunologically compatible kidney donation.
Prof. Wani stressed that “Swap Transplant is one of the ways to counter organ shortage as organ shortage is a main hurdle in kidney transplant”. He said that with the successful conduct of first swap kidney transplant SKIMS has set the ball rolling for enhancing the donor pool. He said it requires a lot of logistics and expertise as two transplants are performed in a single day, which is burdensome but SKIMS with all its capabilities performed the surgery successfully and created a ray of hope for the helpless patients.
{{/usCountry}}Prof. Wani stressed that “Swap Transplant is one of the ways to counter organ shortage as organ shortage is a main hurdle in kidney transplant”. He said that with the successful conduct of first swap kidney transplant SKIMS has set the ball rolling for enhancing the donor pool. He said it requires a lot of logistics and expertise as two transplants are performed in a single day, which is burdensome but SKIMS with all its capabilities performed the surgery successfully and created a ray of hope for the helpless patients.
{{/usCountry}}He said SKIMS is a major contributor to the organ transplant program of the country filling a major gap as one lac eighty thousand kidney failure patients need kidney transplants in India in a year and only 6,000 kidney transplants are done.
He said SKIMS has so far done more than 550 kidney transplants successfully.