June 26, 2002	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 14, 1423

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PESHAWAR, June 25: Doctors at Khyber Teaching Hospital have put a patient in difficulty after kidney transplantation, doctors and relatives of the patients told Dawn here Tuesday.

Masood Shah, a resident of Mohallah Amirabad Utmanzai, Charsadda district, developed some kidney problem while working in Saudi Arabia as labourer. Meanwhile, he was arrested by the police for illegal stay and was sent to jail. He was released soon after the authorities came to know about his bad health.

After being released from the Khyber Hospital he was admitted to Khyber Teaching Hospital’s nephrology department by Dr Nisar Anwar. He was diagnosed as a patient of chronic renal failure. According to the doctors, his ultrasound examination showed that his kidneys had been damaged and needed a healthy kidney to be transplanted to him. Dr Nisar Anwar who treated the patient, contacted urologist Dr Asif Malik  of surgical A ward of the same hospital in order to operate him upon for kidney transplant.

His elder sister donated her kidney.

The patient was shifted to operation theatre on June 16. Normally, the cold cases are done on regular working days but the urologist concerned did not take permission for the kidney transplant operation from head of surgery  department who argued that in the wake of  non- availability of required infrastructure for kidney transplant at the hospital, the patient would die. However, the urologist undertook the operation. First, he operated upon her sister and removed kidney of patient’s sister to be transplanted to her ailing brother.

“Fumigation was carried out in the operation theatre. It took almost eight hours to complete the procedure and the patient was shifted to a private room after completion of the operation. After a few moments, there was active bleeding on which the doctors shifted the patient to operation theatre again to open him and stop his bleeding, said a surgeon at the KTH. According to him, the patient was rushed to surgical ICU (intensive care unit) where he was put on respiratory machine.

An ultrasound examination carried out on June 19 revealed that the kidney which had been transplanted, had become gangrenous. The unfortunate patient was again rushed to the operation theatre where the surgeon removed his sole kidney, which had been donated to him by her sister.

The patient is still lying in surgical ICU but the way the operation was carried out had drawn severe criticism from the medical community. Senior doctors argue that non- availability of the facilities for such operation was the main cause which also deprived the sister of the patient from her normal kidney.

According to medical experts, kidney transplant operation was a team work comprising of urologist, nephrologist, cardiovascular surgeon, cardiologist and general surgeon but in this particular case, the urologist concerned performed the operation with the help of one nephrologist and a trainee medical officer (TMO) of his ward.

This was going to be the first kidney transplant operation in the public sector’s hospital in Frontier. About 15 transplants operations have been carried out in the city in private sector which all were performed by a team of doctors required for the procedure.

An operation theatre assistant told Dawn that they do not have the basic ingredients let alone the machines and equipments required for kidney transplant operation.

A doctor said a few months back, some doctors had sought the permission of institutional management committee (IMC) of the hospital to start the same operations at the KTH, but the committee had turned the plea for lack of the infrastructure.