Doctors from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in the national Capital have successfully performed a challenging 'Auto-Kidney transplant' in a young patient, who had the history of a stone in left ureter, the pipe connecting kidney and urinary bladder

'Auto-Kidney Transplant', means taking the normal kidney out from the left side of the body of the patient and bringing it close to the bladder on the right side and connecting it with blood vessels going from the abdomen to the right leg (External Iliac Vessels). Now both the kidneys are on the right side, said the doctors.

The hospital’s Department of Urology & Kidney Transplant last month received a 29-year-old patient from Punjab who had a history of stone in left ureter.

A local doctor from Punjab tried to remove stone but during process 25-26cm of left ureter also came out along with stone, said medical experts from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. "In a normal patient there is one kidney on left and one on right side and two ureters connecting these kidneys to bladder. But in this case we were surprised to see left kidney lying alone without any connection with the bladder," said Dr. Vipin Tyagi, Senior Consultant, who operated the patient."Since the patient was young and the intestine is not the ideal substitute for the ureter reconstruction. We decided to perform 'Auto-Kidney Transplant'.

Dr Tyagi further added: "The kidney was close to the bladder but with a gap of 4-5cms. So, we decided to reconstruct a tube of 4-5cms using the wall of the urinary bladder. As soon as this reconstructed tube was connected to the bladder, the blood flow to this kidney restarted and immediately urine started coming out through this tube."

"The options before us were either to remove the kidney or remake missing connection between kidney and bladder by using intestine or perform kidney autotransplant," Dr. Sudhir Chadha, Co-Chairperson, Department of Urology, added.

Meanwhile, the patient has recovered well and was discharged with both functioning kidneys on one side of body (right side). Dr. Harsha Jauhari, Chairman, Department of Kidney Transplant, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital explained, “There are three kinds of organ transplants: Auto-Transplant, Allo-Transplant and Xeno Transplant.

Auto-Transplant means transplanting one organ from one place to another in the

same human being. Allo-Transplant means transplanting organs from one individual to another and Xeno Transplant means transplanting organs from non-human sources into human beings.”