In a high risk case, doctors at a city hospital performed a kidney transplant surgery on a three-year-old boy from Iraq suffering from end stage kidney disease, thus offering him with a fresh lease of life.

The child, Muslim Abdul Zahra, was born with kidney dysplasia, a condition where internal structures of both his kidneys had not developed normally.

Zahra had undergone haemodylysis, a treatment in which the blood is cleansed of toxins through an "artificial kidney", in Iraq for a couple of months but when the treatment there failed he was brought to India and admitted to the Asian Institute of Medical Sciences in January.

"Hemodylysis is suitable for adults and older children whereas peritoneal dialysis is preferable in case of small kids. But peritoneal dialysis is not available in Iraq, and the child could not tolerate the other alternative Haemodylysis following which his family brought him to India.

"The child's condition had become critical following high blood pressure and excessive fluid intake the child was going into recurrent cardiac failure and also had cardiac arrest requiring cardiopulmonary resuscitation on one occasion," said Dr Jitendra Kumar, Director of Nephrology and Kidney Transplant Department at the hospital.

According to transplant surgeon at the hospital Dr Vijay Laxmi, kidney transplant in such small children is very challenging.

"Due to narrow size of the blood vessels of the child, stitching them with the blood vessels of the new kidney is very difficult. This also makes blood vessels prone for clot formation which can damage the new kidney. Our team accepted this challenge and transplanted the grandfather's kidney in the child."



The transplantation took place on May 22.

"The donor of the kidney, Zahra's grandfather, Hasan Nayyaf is 50-year-old and in such cases the complications are high and operative risk always existed because of the age difference between the donor and the receiver," Dr Kumar said.

Now, six weeks after transplantation, Zahra is able to walk and his condition has improved.