A team of surgeons at John Hopkins Medical Center have managed to remove a healthy kidney through a donor’s vagina. The procedure was performed for the first time for donation purposes. Similar surgeries were done before to extract cancerous and non-functioning kidneys.

Donated kidneys are usually removed laparoscopically through small keyhole incisions.

 

The kidney was removed and transferred into the donor’s niece. Hospital officials have announced that both patients are doing fine.

Doctors said the procedure was less painful compared to gall bladder surgery and the donor is expected to recover more quickly than Gilbert’s father, who donated one of his kidneys for his daughter 12 years ago. When the kidney is removed through a natural opening, the patient has better chances of recovery and the procedure offers a better cosmetic result.

 

“The kidney was successfully removed and transplanted into the donor’s niece, and both patients are doing fine. As far as we know, no one has ever applied this type of procedure to a donor kidney,” Dr Robert Montgomery of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who led the surgical team, was quoted as saying.

The surgeons hope the procedure will encourage more women to become donors.

Gilbet needed the first transplant because her kidneys were damaged by repeated infections. After the procedure, she began suffering chronic rejection and she needed another transplant.

 

According to recent estimates, the number of people on waiting list for a transplant is also increasing. Currently, more than 78,000 people are on the waiting list to receive kidneys from dead donors. Laparoscopic removal has provided an alternative to the method of abdominal incisions. The number of living donor kidney transplants is increasing lately, reaching one in three of all kidney transplants.