Two patients got a new lease of life as the organs of two brain-dead patients were harvested and a green corridor was created to ensure that the kidneys reached Aykai Hospital in Ludhiana from a hospital in Mohali in about 50 minutes, earlier this week.
State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (SOTTO) nodal officer Dr Gagneen Kaur Sandhu said this was the first such operation in Punjab.
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A thirty-year-old lawyer, who had been on dialysis for over a year, received a kidney from a 56-year-old Ladakhi woman, who had died of brain injury at a Mohali hospital, on March 19. After the lady’s family agreed to donate her organs, the young ailing advocate who was in the recipient’s queue with the Aykai hospital here received the organ, setting him free from the self-dialysis
A couple of days later, in another similar operation, a kidney from a 65-year-old deceased man was successfully transplanted into a 33-year-old lady.
Dr Baldev Singh Aulakh, the transplant surgeon, who did both these surgeries, said the entire operation needed perfect coordination among the Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation, both the hospitals and the police authorities who organised the corridor.
“Before the organs reached here, we had three people, who were on the top of the wait list ready. As soon as the organ was received, we checked it with the patients, and depending on whose body the organ matched with and their eligibility, these two people were chosen,” he said.
“As soon as a family commits the deceased’s organs, they become a national property and then according to a set rule the patient is selected,” he added.
Explaining the procedure, the doctor said, “If someone dies due to a brain injury and stroke, they are called brain dead as eight organs in their bodies are alive for some time. If they can be properly translated within 24 hours, it can save the lives of dozens of people.”
However, he noted that time here was of the essence. “Each of these 24 hours mattered.”
“The organ is put into a cold liquid while in transit. The more time it spends in the liquid, there are more chance of it being damaged. Here comes the importance of the green corridor. We were able to get these organs here in 50 minutes. Which is almost half the time it takes between the two cities. Had it taken longer, the chances of success would have been less. Here time is inversely proportional to the chances of a successful transplant.”
The elder brother of the ailing advocate said his brother started facing health issues when he was around 28. After a year of treatment, a catheter was attached to his abdomen for peritoneal dialysis. The procedure, except for the medicines and other medical expenses, costs around ₹50,000 per month. “We couldn’t see him having a normal life again. His personal and professional life had come to a crushing halt.”
“Now with the transplant, we are looking forward to normal life for him.”
The other patient is a mother to a six-year-old child. She was diagnosed with kidney failure last December. She had to come into the facility for dialysis twice every week, which would cost nearly about ₹30,000 to ₹40,000.
Her husband was elated to know that she would now be able to get back to normal. Dr Aulakh said if all went fine, both of them would now be able to get back to normal lives with a few regular medicines.
A “green corridor” is a special route that is managed in a way that the traffic signals that come in the route of the hospital where an organ is harvested and the hospital where it is to be transplanted, are green and controlled manually.
News / Cities / Chandigarh / Green corridor gives new lease of life to two Ludhiana patients
