Zonal body to look into organ transplant suggestions

The city's organ transplant committee has made suggestions to the Zonal Transplant Coordination Centre (ZTCC) with regards to the process of organ transplant. While some of the suggestions can be implemented, the ZTCC says others are difficult to implement due to lack of funds and less time within which the organ needs to be transplanted from a brain-dead patient.

The suggestions of the technical expert committee include — long-term preservation of donor blood and tissue should be done to enable scientific inquiries into the unusual outcomes, Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) matching should be preferred even in cadaveric kidney transplants while allocating kidneys, any rare and adverse outcome should be reported to ZTCC within 24 hours, and so on.

The committee comprised of four members including — Dr Avinash Supe, Dr NK Hase, Dr DR Karnad and Dr Darius Mirza. The technical report was prepared on a case of organ transplant wherein two kidney transplant patients lost their lives to a rare immunological cause.

Dr SK Mathur, president of ZTCC, said, "We have agreed on a few suggestions and will be coordinating with the hospital about the preservation of the samples as well as reporting to the ZTCC team about the adverse effect of the organ donated by a cadaveric donor. It is not possible to wait for the HLA match report since it takes more time for the report."

"There are only two HLA labs in the city based hospital — Jaslok Hospital and Hinduja Hospital. Also, the test cost is expensive in order to do HLA testing. Logistically and financially it is difficult to do HLA matching to every cadaveric kidney transplants while allocating kidneys to the patients," he said.

The key finding by the committee is that they did not find any deficiencies in the processes of donor maintenance or peri-transplant care. There has been no evidence of bacterial, fungal or other acute infections in any of the recipients, acquired from the donor. While the blood group and cross-matching were appropriate, they concluded that it appears to be due to an extremely rare immunological phenomenon.

Committee Report

Suggestions include long-term preservation of donor blood and tissue to be done to enable scientific inquiries into unusual outcomes, & soon