LASUTH celebrates first kidney transplant
Doctors at the Lagos State University
Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja,
yesterday celebrated the first successful
kidney transplant ever done in Lagos
tertiary hospital. The feat, conducted on
a 56-year-old unnamed male patient,
was after several years of training and
infrastructure development in the
hospital.
Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the
hospital, Prof. Adewale Oke, said the
feat, by a team of homegrown doctors,
has opened the way for several other
patients with advanced renal conditions
to be fully treated and at affordable cost
in the country.
Oke explained that the patient, who was
at the end-stage renal disease, was
selected for the maiden surgery, and
after about six-hour surgery (organ
harvesting and implantation), the
operation was successful.
The elated CMD said: “LASUTH has come
of age and we are glad. We are able to
harness what we have and so we will
continue to improve on infrastructure.
Kidney transplant is not free; it cannot
be free, but with us doing it here, the
cost will be affordable (compared to
traveling to India or United Kingdom for
operation).”
he said.
He added that the feat has complemented
the state government’s infrastructure
efforts in developing the state-of-the-art
Cardiac and Renal Centre in Gbagada.
Head of the surgical team, Dr. Olugbenga
Awobusuyi, said that the journey started
some 10 years ago, when the hospital
began capacity building of specialists
with training courses done in Brazil,
Kenya and United Kingdom.
Today, Awobusuyi said, we now have
confidence that we could do more of
renal transplantation of patients around
here.
He said that the latest of several services
offered in the hospital would help stop
the trend of patients going to India and
returning with complications that often
eventually kill them.
Awobusuyi, a neurologist, said that the
patient, who is still recuperating in the
ward, had to be persuaded to have the
operation here in Nigeria instead of
India, his first choice. After a year of
dialysis, the patient came up with a
donor (nephew), which made LASUTH to
consider the operation.
LASUTH management said that where
compatible donors are readily available,
the procedure is now more possible in
the Lagos tertiary hospital.
Kidney transplantation or renal
transplantation is the organ transplant
of a kidney into a patient with end-stage
renal disease. Kidney transplantation is
typically classified as deceased-donor
(formerly known as cadaveric) or living-
donor transplantation depending on the
source of the donor organ.
Living-donor renal transplants are
further characterized as genetically
related (living-related) or non-related
(living-unrelated) transplants, depending
on whether a biological relationship
exists between the donor and recipient
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