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ARCHIVED - Kidneys from same donor transplanted into identical twins for the first time in Spain
A team of nephrologists and surgeons in Barcelona carried out the transplants on the two brothers
Two kidneys from the same donor have been successfully transplanted into identical twins - the first transplant of this kind to be carried out in Spain, according to the National Transplant Organisation (ONT).
A team of nephrologists and surgeons from the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu and Hospital Clínic de Barcelona this week carried out the life-saving operations on the twin brothers born with a congenital disease.
The children suffer from autosomal polycystic kidney disease, an inherited disorder that causes the development of cysts inside the kidneys and leads to a slow and progressive loss of kidney function, making long-term transplantation necessary.
In the case of the brothers, at the age of 11-years-old, their kidneys had already lost 90% functionability.
The sick twins were put on the Catalan Transplant Organisation (Ocatt) waiting list and "thanks to the generosity of a family and the organisation of the entire operation" the brothers were able to be transplanted at the same time shortly afterwards.
They have remained hospitalised together at all times and after "overcoming some complications", are progressing "favourably", currently only requiring outpatient monitoring, explained the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu in a statement.
But it was by no means all plain sailing with the team and family having to overcome a difficult initial obstacle.
"As 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. But when we did the donor screening tests, we found that the mother could be a donor, but not the father, and the rest of the family members were not compatible," said the hospital.
This situation presented the medical team with a major ethical dilemma as they couldn't transplant only one of the brothers when they were in "an identical clinical situation".
There was no "objective criterion" to indicate that one child required a transplant more urgently than the other, so, once living donation was ruled out, the children were placed on the waiting list.
"From that moment on, it took only a few hours for both of them to be able to undergo surgery to receive the organs they needed from the same donor," added the hospital.
Image: Flickr
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