Renal Transplant Centre
The transplant surgery centre at PGI is one of the pioneers in transplantation in India. The first renal transplant was performed here in June1973. It is currently one of the largest centre providing composite facilities for renal transplantation in India.
The department is extremely popular as it performs renal transplants at minimal charges and receives patients from not only surrounding states but also from far off places like North East states, Orissa, Bihar, Jharknad, UP, Nepal etc. The total cost of a standard transplant procedure is around INR 70,000/- including the cost of medicines and 2 weeks of hospital stay for the donor and recipient.
The department has a six bedded ICU which was upgraded to twelve beds recently and has a separate Operation theatre complex dedicated to transplant and related surgery and has state of the art equipments for managing patients in the intraop and postop period.
The department has experience of performing more than 1500 living as well as cadaver donor renal transplants so far and has performed renal transplants in a number of complex situations. In addition to this, it is also involved in various vascular access procedures for Haemodialysis and has been performing major vascular surgery procedures.
Cadaveric transplantation is also being performed at the centre depending upon the availability of cadaver organs and it also maintains a list of patients who need these organs. The survival of these patients after transplantation at the centre is among the best in India.
The department introduced advanced laparoscopic methods for retrieval of donor kidneys in 2004 and is currently performing laparoscopic donor nephrectomy in all donors.
(Laparoscopic donor nephrectomy in progress)
The department is actively involved in research and has a number of publications in national and international journals. Currently areas of research include:-
Role of anti-HLA antibodies in renal transplantation
C4d deposition in protocol biopsies in renal transplantation
Expression of cytokines in renal transplant rejection
HCV virus dynamics and immune response in post renal transplant recipients
Developing a protocol for steroid free immunosuppression in living renal transplantation
It is also in the process of procuring flow cytometer, PCR for patient care/research in basic sciences related to transplantation.