Don't worry mum, I know what I'm doing!

[Poppylicious]

Don't worry mum, I know what I'm doing! Transplant surgeon becomes first ever to donate his own kidney after mother falls ill.

By Graham Smith

A transplant surgeon at a leading hospital has saved his mother's life by donating one of his own kidneys. It is thought to be the first time in the world that a transplant doctor has donated an organ. Dr Asim Syed, 32, has performed more than 100 operations at London's Hammersmith Hospital in the country's busiest transplant unit, but never imagined that he would one day become a donor himself.

He stepped forward when told his 64-year-old mother Dilshad, who had been on dialysis for five years, might be dead within months unless she got a new kidney.

The worried surgeon brought her to London from her home in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, to be cared for at his hospital. Just hours after donating his own kidney, Dr Syed found himself recovering in bed next to his mother and two other patients on whom he had recently operated.

Mrs Syed said: 'When I came round from my operation Asim was in the next bed and the first thing he said was: "Mum now all your worries are over".' Other members of the family were either not a correct match for Mrs Syed or were not fit enough to donate.

However, it was not all plain sailing. Tests showed Dr Syed was the wrong blood group, so the only way for him to donate directly was for his mother to go through a special blood-washing process to remove antibodies that would reject his kidney. He consulted colleagues about blood-washing, but they were reluctant to use the method because the risk of rejection is still too high. Dr Syed and his mother were then advised to consider a new way of donating and receiving, called an organ-paired or pooled donation. This is where would-be donors who are not a correct match can find a correct match through an anonymous donor chain. Dr Syed donated his kidney to an unknown person and another donor in the chain was a successful match for his mother.

The chain of three transplants - involving three donors and three  recipients from three transplant centres - took place simultaneously on July 31 with Dr Syed's kidney going to a recipient in the Midlands and  Mrs Syed receiving her kidney from a person in the south of England.

Now mother and son are recovering well with Dr Syed already back at work. Mrs Syed is staying with him for several months while the hospital monitors her progress. He said: 'I did what anyone would do when they see a relative suffering but it wasn't as straightforward as we had hoped. A pooled donation was the only way of guaranteeing mum would get a transplant quickly. Although I wasn't able to help mum directly, by agreeing to be part of a chain you all help each other. By volunteering in such a way we took three people off dialysis.'

Mrs Syed said: 'Because Asim was a transplant surgeon he recognised how ill I was becoming. He whisked me down to London to be seen by his colleagues. They stabilised me so that I was fit enough for a transplant. Until I met the team at the Hammersmith no one had mentioned a pooled donation. I'm not sure I'd have got a transplant if it hadn't been for Asim being in transplants. He knew exactly what was needed.'

Dr Syed's father Azmat, 69, who has been a GP in Doncaster for 36 years, said: 'We were reluctant for Asim to donate because he is young, but his sister and older members of the family weren't suitable for donation. My wife really needed a transplant and Asim was aware that being on dialysis is not a bed of roses. It's far from ideal and a lot of patients find leading a normal life quite difficult.'

Dr Syed Jr said: 'People think that once you are on dialysis your life is not at risk. When I looked at the statistics I was quite shocked. Only 30 per cent of dialysis patients survive to five years and at ten years only ten per cent are alive. Being on dialysis is not good for the body because not all the toxins are removed and because people are not dialysed often enough. Patients only go on dialysis three times a week in hospital because there are not enough machines. Ideally patients should dialyse every day or five or six times a week.'

Dr Syed's boss, Professor Nadey Hakim, performed both transplants. He said: 'What a magnificent gesture. Asim knows how vital it is to get more live donors. When his mum needed help he knew what he had to do.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2076940/Dr-Asim-Syed-transplant-surgeon-donate-kidney-mother-falls-ill.html#ixzz1hDEsmOnO

There are a few things which irk me about this article, but I'm posting it purely because Blokey has panicked himself about the bit I emboldened and enlarged.  He's never really looked at the statistics before and so this has come as a shock to him.  I don't actually believe the second bit and would like to see the evidence for myself, but I've read lots of bits off this forum to him this evening and I think he's feeling a tad better now. 

(But nice one, Mr Transplant Surgeon!)

[MooseMom]

Re: the emboldened bits, read a bit further...

It's the fact that most people don't get ENOUGH dialysis that's the problem.  If everyone could dialyze more frequently, those stats would change.  Unfortunately, the only way people can get enough dialysis is if they do it themselves, ie, at home. 

[willowtreewren]

This doctor walked the walk!

 

[Bill Peckham]

Re: the emboldened bits, read a bit further...

It's the fact that most people don't get ENOUGH dialysis that's the problem.  If everyone could dialyze more frequently, those stats would change.  Unfortunately, the only way people can get enough dialysis is if they do it themselves, ie, at home.

The figures are misleading. They are meant to overstate the problem - to put it kindly it is dramatic puffery. If you wanted to inform people about the true benefit of transplant you would compare the expected life span of the tightly selected group of people using a transplant against the expected life span of an equally tightly selected group of people who use dialysis and are medically eligible for a transplant.

And if you wanted to compare costs in a way that informed people as to the real figures you would compare the yearly medical cost of someone with a transplant - not just the cost of immunosuppression - to the yearly cost of using dialysis among those who are medically eligible for a transplant.

I think the transplant community would do better to rethink their approach and to stick to facts. Compare apples to apples.

[jbeany]

Yeah, I'm with Bill on this.  Stats say what the person offering them want them to say.  That 30% includes everyone who goes on D - including the elderly who go on at 88 or 90, and might not have made it 5 years in the first place, even without kidney problems.  It includes those who die from other problems like heart attacks that may or may not be related to ESRD.  Heck, it includes those who got hit by the midtown bus on their way home from D.

 If you want a better idea, you need to look at much more specific stats that break things down to include age, other health issues, etc.  And even those are misleading, since they don't include details about social support, personal efforts to stick to the diet and fluid restrictions, and a million other things, from taking pills on time, educating yourself about options.... on and on, right down to how good your doctor is at communicating with you. ALL these things figure in to your life expectancy.

Statistically, anyone who got the transplant complications I did is supposed to be dead too.  So does that make me a vampire, a ghost, or a zombie?  Cause I'm still up walking around!