In a first for Shanghai, a kidney transplant has been successfully carried out with an organ from a related donor with a different blood type.
The 24-year-old patient, who had been suffering from acute kidney failure, was discharged from Zhongshan Hospital yesterday after receiving a kidney donated by his mother, said medics.
Medical experts said the success of the transplant offers hope to many families in Shanghai, as about one third of relatives are usually ruled out in the first round of screening because of blood incompatibility.
Doctors hope the procedure, which was first carried out in Japan in 1989, will help alleviate the organ shortage caused by the decision early last year to stop harvesting organs from executed prisoners.
If they do not receive organs from a relative, a kidney failure patient can wait up to 10 years for a suitable organ from a deceased donor.
Kidneys donated by living relative are used in 30 percent of transplants, and the procedure can help expand the donor pool, doctors said.
The patient, surnamed Jiang, started to feel tired in August last year and was found to be suffering from nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys, which later developed into uremia.
Jiang's 47-year-old mother offered to donate one of her kidneys, but medics found that she had type A blood and Jiang had type O, which have traditionally been incompatible.
"Usually, blood types matching is the primary prerequisite for a kidney transplant because the recipient can suffer an acute rejection, which is fatal," said Dr Wang Shuo from Zhongshan Hospital.
After an international consultation process, doctors decided to use a method previously untried in the city to overcome the blood type incompatibility.
The transplant, which was conducted on April 14, went smoothly and Jiang's kidney function has been restored.
"Experiences at home and abroad show that the current effects of [blood type] incompatible kidney transplantation is the same and even better with compatible ones because of immunity therapy before surgery," said Dr Zhu Tongyu, Jiang's surgeon, adding that the procedure puts heavy demands on the hospital carrying it out.
