Mumbai: Two women swap kidneys to save each other's spouse

[okarol]

Mumbai: Two women swap kidneys to save each other's spouse

Siddhartha D. Kashyap & Nozia Sayyed
Saturday, March 21, 2009 2:42 IST

Pune: These two homemakers had almost given up hope. It was only after a chance meeting at the hospital when they discovered that they would be able to save each other's husband, both suffering from kidney failure.

Consulting nephrologist Shriniwas Ambike said it was a near miracle as they not only had the same blood group but also the tissue matching was perfect, which is not easily found in unrelated transplants.

Fortytwo-year-old Sanjay Shinde from Satara, who was on dialysis for almost two years, received a kidney from Manda Pawar (38) whose husband Ramdas (47), a resident of Hadapsar, also had a failed kidney. He was desperately searching for a donor.

Sanjay's wife Sunita (33) in return, donated her kidney to Ramdas. Doctors at the Jehangir Hospital where the operations were performed, said that Sanjay's parents were not alive and none of his family members were suitable as donors. Similar was the case of Ramdas, who grew up in an orphanage.

While both the women were willing to donate their kidneys to their respective husbands, their blood groups did not match with that of their husbands.

"But as destiny would have it, their blood groups matched each other's husbands' blood group," a doctor treating them said.
According to Ambike, the two families met and came close to each other only at the hospital where their husbands were undergoing dialysis.

"This is one of the rarest of rare cases," Ambike said, adding that a similar case took place in Mumbai recently.
Doctors said that although both the women were medically fit for the transplant, obtaining the mandatory clearance from the authorities for unrelated donors wasn't easy.

The hospital decided that the case merited a special effort and pulled out all stops to get the transplant permission. The local authoritative committee at Sassoon Hospital, headed by dean Dr Nirmala Borade extended considerable support.

Accordingly the transplants, which included four separate surgeries - two kidneys harvested from the wives and two transplants on their husbands - were done successfully on March 13, a day after the World Kidney Day. All the four patients are due for discharge tomorrow.

Hospital officials said it was a challenging task simultaneously performing four operations. "We had to form four different surgical teams," a doctor said. Drs Deepak Kirpekar, Dhanesh Kamerkar, Sanjay Kulkarni, Nitin Gadgil, Ketan Pai, Sudhir Phadke, Meera Santosh and Archana Jana were part of the operation team.