According to foreign media reports, a former British soldier has become the first patient in the UK to undergo laparoscopic kidney transplantation.
Brian Blanchard suffers from kidney failure and needs to be maintained by dialysis. Last month, the doctor performed a kidney transplant with laparoscopic surgery. There are two breakthroughs in this technology.
One is that the transplanted organ comes from his sister Pam Marphett. The doctor takes out the donated kidney through her groin instead of the traditional abdomen, leaving almost no postoperative scars.
Another breakthrough was that the removed kidney implanted in Brian's body had less than 2.5 inches of incision in the abdomen. Previously, the size of the incision for a kidney transplant was 10 inches.
Surgeons say the new technology lays the foundation for safer transplants and allows patients to recover faster.
Advances in technology have made laparoscopic kidney transplantation possible. Professor Pranjal Modi from Royal Liverpool Hospital in India initiated a minimally invasive surgery in 2010 to remove the kidneys from the navel without scar endoscopy. He successfully performed 172 minimally invasive procedures in Ahmedabad, northern India.
But the operation has never been done elsewhere. Professor Modi is also proficient in organ harvesting from the groin.
The purpose of both endoscopic techniques is to allow patients to recover as quickly as possible, reducing the risk of postoperative pain and infection and allowing patients to be discharged as soon as possible.
The doctor not only avoided a major surgical incision for Brian, but also avoided new scars. The doctor performed a kidney transplant through his old appendicitis surgical scar.