41-year-old Chennai man has 5 kidneys, after renal transplant

A 41-year-old resident of Chennai now has five kidneys in his body, after undergoing third renal transplant surgery.

The patient, who underwent third renal transplant surgery at the Madras Mission Hospital, earlier had two transplanted kidneys in his body along with his original two kidneys. This is one of the rarest of procedures conducted on a patient, which is not common even globally.

The surgery was performed on the patient on July 10 and exactly after a month during his first check-up post the operation, the doctors found that he was keeping well, and his transplanted kidney was functioning properly.

The vascular and transplant surgeon who performed the surgery on the patient, Saravanan, told IANS, “There were four challenges in performing this surgery — first, lack of space for the new kidney in the retroperitoneum; lack of width on the native blood vessels to connect the renal artery and vein; the bladder was scattered with earlier surgeries; and the patient tended to develop a lot of antibodies from the earlier surgeries and plasmapheresis (filtering the blood) had to be performed before placing the new kidney.”

He also said that the reason the old kidneys have not been removed to make space for the new one is that the patient could profusely bleed and require blood transfusion and could lead to the production of antibodies and rejection of the new kidney.