Nigeria records second successful kidney transplant

Nigeria records second successful kidney transplant

The authorities of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) said they would make a formal announcement of the medical breakthrough recorded in kidney transplant at a news conference on Thursday.

The medical feat, which was the second of its type in Nigeria, was achieved by a team of surgeons of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi Araba, in Lagos State, Nigeria’s commercial nerve, on Tuesday.

An official source at LUTH told reporters that the four-hour operation “went very well”, adding that the kidney recipient “is responding positively” at the hospital.

Milestone

Nigeria’s first kidney transplant was conducted on the 31-year-old Suleiman Usman in September 2010 by doctors from University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) in collaboration with the Bayero University Teaching Hospital, Kano and the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

The kidney was said to be donated by his brother, Abubakar Usman at the university’s Kidney Centre.

UMTH pointed out that with the successful transplant, there would be no more need to send kidney patients for transplant in foreign countries.

Renal failure

Experts described kidney transplant or renal transplant as the organ transplant of a kidney into a patient with end-stage renal disease.

The first kidney transplant in the United States was performed on June 17, 1950, on a 44-year-old woman, Ruth Tucker, at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, Illinois.

Report says the donated kidney was, however, rejected ten months later because no immunosuppressive therapy was available at the time.

Bill Thompson was said to be the longest-surviving American kidney recipient, having received his kidney in 1966 at age 15 and it has survived over 40 years.

More than half of the over 27,000 kidney transplants so far undertaken across the world were reportedly carried out in the US.

NAN/Shakira/Williams