This extremely rare surgery was performed on a 48-year-old man who had been treated for polycystic kidney disease for many years. He had high serum creatinine levels, but, nevertheless, he was not yet receiving dialysis therapy. When it became clear that the patient's brother could be an organ donor, a decision to perform a kidney transplant was made. Today, the best renal replacement therapy is considered to be an organ transplantation.
Had the specialists followed a routine algorithm, the procedure would have taken place in two stages. First, the patient would have the cystic kidney removed, and only after several months would the transplantation be performed. This would involve the need for dialysis. However, it was possible to avoid dialysis thanks to a modern procedure of removing the diseased kidney with simultaneous transplantation of the organ.
The procedure involved the right kidney, which for anatomical reasons has a short renal vein and is therefore technically much more difficult to harvest and transplant. The kidney harvest and transplantation was performed at the Department of General, Vascular and Transplantation Surgery CCH UCC MUW headed by Prof. Sławomir Nazarewski. Due to great team coordination, the total time of renal ischemia was only 2 hours and 49 minutes. Twelve days after the procedure, the patient's serum creatinine decreased from 9.39 mg/dL to 1.22 mg/dL. The patient is feeling very well and is already at home, as is his brother who was a donor.
Such a complex procedure required a large team of specialists. Hand-assisted right laparoscopic living donor nephroctomy for kidney transplantation was performed by a surgical team consisting of: Prof. Tomasz Jakimowicz, MD, PhD, Dr Łukasz Romanowski, Dr Katarzyna Jama with nurses: Marzena Kaczmarska, MA, and Karolina Kiełek, MA, as well as anesthesiology team: Dr Marek Kozakowski and Katarzyna Dołoto, MA. It is worth emphasizing that it was the 130th laparoscopic kidney harvest in the Department of General, Vascular and Transplantation Surgery CCH UCC MUW, which is the largest nationwide single-center experience.
Removal of a cystic kidney with simultaneous transplantation of a kidney from patient’s brother was performed by a team composed of: Prof. Tadeusz Grochowiecki, MD, PhD, Dr. Łukasz Wielocha, Dr. Michał Proczka with nurses: Małgorzata Ponichtera, Dorota Szydło and the anesthesiology team composed of Dr. Adam Makowski and an anesthesiology nurse Agnieszka Puzon.
The donor and the recipient were under the care of nephrologists: Dr Natalia Mikołajczyk and Dr Dorota Lewandowska from the Department of Transplantation Medicine, Nephrology and Internal Diseases at the Infant Jesus Clinical Hospital UCC MUW headed by Prof. Magdalena Durlik. Imaging studies were performed by Magdalena Januszewicz, MD, PhD.