Safdarjung becomes first Central Govt hospital to conduct robotic renal transplant

For long, robotic procedures and complex transplants, which are safer than open surgeries, have been seen as a matter of privilege, available in private hospitals. But a 39-year-old man from UP’s Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh found hope at Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital as it became the first government hospital to have conducted a robotic renal transplant. Surviving on years of dialysis, he did not have money to get a transplant done from a private centre.
A team of doctors led Dr Anup Kumar, Head of the Department of Urology, Robotics and Renal Transplant, managed to transplant a kidney from the man’s wife and save him. The nephrology team was led Dr Himanshu Verma, Head of the Department of Nephrology while the anesthesia team was led Dr Madhu Dayal.
“The surgery was conducted on Wednesday. Both recipient and donor are doing excellent post-operation. Robotic renal transplant is the most technically challenging surgery in urology. It requires excellent expertise in robotics as well as renal transplant surgery,” said Dr Kumar.
“It’s a new technology. We wanted to select a patient who was fit for the surgery and had less comorbidities,” said Dr Verma, adding the patient who received the kidney had a BMI of 32. “The BMI of the donor was also on the higher side and we took out the kidney nephroscopically,” said the doctor.
Benefits of robotic surgery
According to Dr Kumar, the advantage of a robotic surgery is that the incisions are very small resulting in less scars and tissue tear. It is also a less time-taking process.
“In robotic surgery, the suturing and dissection is better than open surgery due to 3-D vision, depth perception,10 times magnification and better illumination; the endowr like movements of robotic instruments with seven degrees of freedom result in precise suturing,” said Dr Kumar.
According to Dr Verma, robotic kidney transplantation is beneficial as it includes easier vascular anastomosis ( less blood loss), better cosmetic results (small scar), a lower complication rate and a faster recovery. This ensures better results in the obese patients.
First Central Govt facility to get the tech upgrade
Safdarjung hospital is the first Central Government hospital in India to start robotic renal transplants. According to Dr Verma, this is the first time a robotic renal surgery was conducted at Safdarjung hospital. “This facility is not available even in AIIMS and PGI, Chandigarh. Four private hospitals in India conduct this robotic surgery,” he said, adding that Safdarjung hospital had conducted 100 transplant surgeries so far and this was the 100th.
“We are also planning to conduct two surgeries every week. Earlier we were doing only one surgery per week free of cost,” he said.
Cost-effective surgery
The robotic transplant surgery is free of cost at Safdarjung hospital. “Safdarjung hospital is the only hospital in India to provide life-long immunosuppressive medicines to in-house renal transplant patients,” said Dr Verma. According to Dr Kumar, an open transplant in a private hospital costs around Rs 4-5 lakhs and the cost of robotic transplant in private hospitals goes up to Rs 6.5-7.5 lakh. This virtually rules out the poor from accessing the benefits of technology.