A team of nephrologists and surgeons from Hospital Sant Joan de Déu and Hospital Clínic de Barcelona have successfully carried out, for the first time in Spain, a transplant of two kidneys from the same donor to two identical twin patients.
The 11-year-old children were born with autosomal polycystic kidney disease, an inherited disorder that causes the development of cysts inside the kidneys and causes a slow and progressive loss of kidney function that makes long-term transplantation necessary, explained this Tuesday the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu.
The medical team of the Sant Joan de Déu Nephrology Service that treats them proposed the option of kidney transplantation to the patients’ families in March of this year, since, at only 11 years of age, their kidneys were functioning at only 10%.
“Since the parents are of the same blood group, the initial idea was that one of the parents could donate a kidney to one of the children and the other parent to the other”, explained the head of the Sant Joan de Déu Nephrology Service Alvaro Madrid.
However, when carrying out the tests to be a donor, the doctors verified that neither the father nor the rest of the relatives were compatible.
“This situation presented us with a great ethical dilemma; we could not transplant only one of the two children when they were in an identical clinical situation. There was no objective criterion that would indicate that one required a transplant more urgently than the other” , Madrid has reported.
Discarded living donation, the medical team then opted for the deceased donor and enrolled the two children on the waiting list of the Catalan Transplant Organization (OCATT).
Thanks to the generosity of a family and the organization of the entire operation by the coordination offices of the National Transplant Organization (ONT) and the OCATT, the two minors were able to be transplanted simultaneously shortly after, the hospital highlighted.
In a few hours, the two children entered the operating room first, one, and at the end of this transplant, the other, to receive their new kidney.
The brothers, who have been hospitalized together at all times, overcame some complications, evolved favorably and currently only require outpatient follow-up.
–
