Three-Year-old is SAARC’s Youngest Incompatible Kidney Recipient

A three-year-old girl has become the youngest person in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region to undergo a blood group incompatible kidney transplant at the Medanta Hospital.

It is being seen as a major breakthrough in kidney transplant.

Pratyusha, weighing 10 kgs, was suffering from ‘reflux nephropathy’ since birth. It is a critical disorder in which the urine tends to go back to the kidneys. 

She was operated upon at the Medanta Hospital.

The doctors say that the major risk of blood group incompatible transplant is hyperacute rejection (kidney may stop working the same day of transplant).

Looking at the criticality of the surgery, they designed a protocol to remove the antibodies and then conducted the transplant on 5 April.

Since the mother had a different blood group, the child received renal transplant with mother as the donor, with a designed desensitisation and immunosuppressive protocol

Dr Sidharth Sethi, Consultant, Pediatric Nephrology & Pediatric Renal Transplant

According to the hospital authorities, the girl required an early kidney transplant, but there was no blood group compatible donor.

An attempt was made to swap the donors with other families and for cadaveric donation list, but nothing materialised.

After six months of desperate search, we planned to take the mother as a donor which was a blood group incompatible transplant. The child was B positive and the mother was A positive.

India’s first pediatric blood group incompatible kidney transplant had already been performed on a 12 year-old in October 2014.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) comprises eight member states – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

(With inputs from PTI)

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