a kidney transplanted a second time

Teams from theAP-HP (Assistance public hospitals in Paris) have transplanted again a kidney that had already been transplanted before on a patient. It’s a first. “Firstly because the donor had himself received this kidney a good fifteen years earlier […] It is a surgical feat that Dr. François Gaudez has achieved with his colleagues because a kidney that has been transplanted merges with its recipient and it is very difficult to manage to remove it without damaging it. It’s more complicated, it’s longer and it’s more risky“, explains Damien Mascret. The recipient had been warned that the transplant could be canceled if the extraction proved impossible, without damaging the organ.

But isn’t using an already transplanted kidney again risky? “He had proved its worth for more than fifteen years and moreover, it started working again perfectly and quickly, in 48 hours, at the new recipient. And above all, unlike the usual organ donations, this one was carried out within the framework of the Maastricht 3 procedure. Again, this is a first in France. That is to say that the sample is taken as soon as a patient dies from cardiac arrest, following a cessation of treatment with continuation of comfort care“, says the doctor and journalist from France Télévisions. In this specific case, the donor had actually had a massive stroke.