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32 min ago
Surgical innovation | Incompatible kidney transplant performed at Groote Schuur hospital
CAPE TOWN - The first incompatible kidney transplant in Africa using the Glycosorb technique - where the donor and recipient's blood type don't match - was performed at Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town this week.
Chervon Meyer had been on dialysis for ten years until her brother donated one of his kidneys but he has a different blood type.
Dr Zunaid Barday says that before, this would have ruled him out completely but thanks to the new technique, this was no longer an issue.
He explained, "normally, the first thing would be looking for a potential donor for any organ transplant, and obviously it goes for kidneys as well, is we would check the blood type and if you're ABO incompatible, which means you've got the wrong blood type and there would be a reaction when you put that organ into the recipient, you certainly tell the donor well you know I'm sorry you're not compatible and you know you move on to another potential donor or if it's a kidney transplant patient you put them on a deceased donor waiting list and you wait for a compatible organ on a deceased donor waiting list."
"So Chevron had been on that waiting list for almost ten years but then this new filter became available and we tested her brother, and they were tissue-compatible which we wouldn't have even gone that far before because they were ABO incompatible."
"So we sort of bypassed the fact that they were ABO incompatible, did the rest of the workup and he was otherwise compatible so we just needed to overcome that ABO barrier."
"In fact a couple of these transplants have been done before, I mean in fact our team did a couple at the UCT private hospital which is next door a few years ago and I think one or two other teams have done it up there in Joburg, but that uses a much more complicated and potentially risky technique of a plasma exchange."
"So this technique is much more efficient because it removes just that one specific antibody that's causing the problem, the anti-A or the anti-B antibody. So it's a much safer and efficient technique and gives us much more confidence that when we do a transplant there isn't going to be immediate rejection because of the ABO incompatibility. Which if there is, I mean it can happen within minutes, the kidney or the organ can just ... and obviously with devastating consequences."