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The basic requirement for successful kidney transplantation is a match of the blood groups. This restricts the number of donors available for a patient amongst his blood relatives. With a special technology, it is possible to remove this barrier and perform transplantation across blood groups. The leaders of this technology are from Tokyo Women Medical University, Japan and MIOT in collaboration with them has successfully performed a transplant with the father having ‘B’ blood group donating the kidney to his son having ‘O’ blood group.

The transplantation was performed 3 months back and both the patient and donor are doing well having normal kidney functions. Normally a person with ‘O’ blood group has anti ‘A’ and anti ‘B’ antibodies, which prevents person with ‘B’ or ‘A’ blood group to donate. The Japanese technology involves removal of antibodies through a special procedure called DFPP (Double Filtration Plasmapheresis) and a careful monitoring of the antibody titers pre and post operatively. Once the transplantation is done at the right time, rejection does not take place and the kidney can last the normal lifespan of the regular kidney transplantation.

According to Dr. Rajan Ravichandran, Director, MIOT Institute of Nephrology, who headed the team, in India several lakhs of patients are suffering from end stage kidney disease requiring dialysis and kidney transplantation. Only about 5000 kidney transplantations are done annually in the country. With the new procedure, the donor pool can substantially be increased and several lives can be saved.