First kidney transplant using constant blood-flow technique a success

A patient has been discharged from hospital in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, after undergoing a kidney transplant using uninterrupted blood flow technology — an all-new technique.

The patient, a 47-year-old migrant worker from Dongguan, was diagnosed with severe renal disease and began receiving kidney dialysis at the beginning of 2016.

The patient, who had surgery on April 9, was discharged from the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University on Tuesday after his postoperative blood tests met targets. The transplant surgery lasted only three hours.

He Xiaoshun, vice-president of the hospital, said the patient was the first to have a kidney successfully transplanted using uninterrupted blood flow technology. He did not reveal the patient’s name.

In July, He and his team conducted a liver transplant with uninterrupted blood flow technology for a cirrhosis patient.

Dozens of patients now have had liver transplants via the pioneering method, and all have achieved very good results.

“Transplant operation in which there is uninterrupted blood flow is a groundbreaking technique and has the advantages of reducing complications and shortened recovery times compared with traditional transplants,” He said on Thursday.

After being collected from organ donors, livers or kidneys are put into special devices developed by He’s team that continuously pump body-temperature blood into the organ, replicating the effect of being in a body and keeping the organ viable.

Traditionally, organs are stored on ice after being removed. But after 30 minutes without blood flow, they begin to deteriorate.

He said the new technology can help keep donated organs viable for much longer before they are transplanted to new recipients. He said the new technology could also be used in other transplant surgeries, including for hearts and lungs.

Wang Xuehao, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said He’s technology is a breakthrough in organ transplant procedures and is expected to bring the practice into a new era.

Late last month, He’s hospital signed a cooperative agreement with the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands to boost cooperation in promoting the new technology worldwide. The Dutch facility is one of the largest organ transplantation centers in the world.