A simultaneous kidney-pancreas transplant was performed on a 46-yearold patient in Apollo Hospitals, Chennai in February 2014. The first pancreas transplant was done in 1966 in the US and hundreds of transplants have been done since then. “Yet, the transplant is rare in India,” said Apollo Hospitals’ senior liver transplant surgeon Dr Anand K Khakhar. His team has had the license to do pancreas transplants since 2010. “But patients refused after we spoke to them about it. The anatomical position of pancreas makes it a complex surgery. The morbidity rates have remained very high. We don't do pancreas transplant unless the patient needs a kidney or liver with it,” he said.

But this February when the Cadaver Transplant Programme, Government of Tamil Nadu, gave the go-ahead to harvest the organs including the pancreas from a young man who was declared brain-dead after a road accident, the 46-year-old patient in Apollo Hospitals agreed to a kidney-pancreas transplant. The patient had been suffering from diabetes for the past 20 years, which had caused chronic kidney failure. Dr. Khakhar said that her diabetes was the burnt-out Type 2 variety, where there was no insulin at all and the team felt that the simultaneous kidney pancreas transplant would ensure a long life for her, free from the complications of diabetes and recurrence of kidney failure.

During the transplant, doctors did not have to remove either the diseased kidneys or pancreas from the body. They placed the new kidney in the lower left side of the abdomen and the new pancreas in the lower right side of the abdomen where it was connected to the blood vessels. “The patient is recovering. Her diabetes has reversed. We are closely monitoring her progress,” said Dr Khakhar, a few days after the transplant. According to Dr. J. Amalorpavanathan, Convenor, Cadaver Transplant Programme, this was the first-ever pancreas transplant in Tamil Nadu and heralded a revolution in transplant science in the state.