25-year-old Shakti has received a lifesaving kidney transplant after being on the transplant waiting list for the last three years. She has suffered from chronic kidney disease since she childhood but earlier this year her condition deteriorated drastically due to which she had to spend several months on daily dialysis. Prafula Shah, her aunt, had offered to give her one of her own but her kidney proved to be a poor tissue match for her niece. Fortunately, Shakti benefitted under the National Living Donor Kidney Sharing Schemes (NLDKSS), which attempts to pair donors and recipients across the country.
In this process, kidneys are swapped between one incompatible donor and recipient and another mismatched pair. After discussing their options with medical experts at the Royal Free Hospital, Prafula and Shakti made the decision to join the NLDKSS as a ‘paired donation’. A match was found and in March, Prafula and Shakti, underwent their procedures on the same day, just metres away from one another in theatres at the Royal Free Hospital.
A new legislation is being proposed which may bring about a change in the law regarding organ donation. Under this proposed system, people will automatically be considered an organ donor unless they opt-out and indicate they do not wish to be. Prafula is optimistic about this legislation that is set to be introduced. She said that this legislation might help reduce the waiting lists for transplants and she is urging families to talk about the possibility of organ donation. Consultant vascular and transplant surgeon Colin Forman, who carried out Prafula's operation, says, “Nationally one in three patients waiting for a transplant are from a BME background but they make up only 6 per cent of donors. Tissue type is like blood group, you are more likely to get a good match from the same ethnic background as yourself, but because of the lack of donors patients wait longer and then are likely to get a donor that is poorly matched”. Explaining the kidney donation process Colin said that once patients have been screened and tested the surgery takes between three and four hours followed by a three to five day stay in hospital and an average six week recovery time.
Both Prafula and Shakti are now helping to raise funds for a research project, led by Mr Reza Motallebzadeh, consultant renal transplant surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital. This projects aims to find out ways to reduce the threat of a kidney being rejected by the recipient's immune system.
