Transplant surgeries: Two men get doctor’s heart, kidney- by the family of a 64-year-old physician who had been declared brain dead

Both the organs were donated by the family of a 64-year-old physician who had been declared brain dead at another city hospital on Monday

The heart being taken inside the Narayana Superspeciality Hospital in Howrah.:Telegraph picture

Subhajoy Roy   |  TT  |  Calcutta   |   28.04.21: A 34-year-old man from Tangra, who had undergone a kidney transplant 10 years ago, underwent a second transplant at the Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences on Tuesday.

A 30-year-old man, a resident of Howrah’s Tikiapara, underwent a heart transplant surgery at the Narayana Superspeciality Hospital in Howrah.

Both the organs were donated by the family of a 64-year-old doctor who had been declared brain dead at another city hospital on Monday.

The man from Tangra had undergone the first kidney transplant in 2010 and was doing well with medication. But the first transplanted kidney stopped functioning when the man could not get the necessary medicines during the Covid-19 pandemic last year. “Usually, a transplanted kidney works for a period of nine to 13 years. This man’s transplanted kidney was working well, though there was a slight increase in creatinine levels. But it stopped working when he missed medication for months during the first wave of the pandemic last year. He had been on dialysis for the last few months,” said Deepak Shankar Ray, the head of the nephrology department at RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences. “His condition is now stable. He will be kept under observation for about a week.”

Unlike heart and liver transplant where the damaged organs are removed before the new organs are transplanted, damaged kidneys are not removed in a kidney transplant. “The man will now live with four kidneys. Since kidneys are very small in size they do not cause a problem even if they are not removed,” said Ray.

The 30-year-old man who underwent a heart transplant was suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy. “It is a situation where the heart muscles weaken leading to enlargement and considerable reduction in the heart’s pumping action. He had recurrent heart failure. He is stable after the surgery but we will observe him closely in the ICU,” said Debasis Das, a cardiothoracic surgery and heart transplant surgeon.

The doctor, whose organs were donated, was posted at the East Midnapore District Hospital where he suffered a head injury in an accident on Thursday, said an official of Apollo Gleneagles, where he was brought on Friday. The man’s corneas went to Disha eye hospital and his skin went to SSKM hospital, said an official of Apollo, where the organs were harvested.