No eligible donor in family, patients swap kidneys of kin

Ghaziabad: Two patients with end-stage kidney disease underwent successful paired kidney transplant at a private hospital in Vaishali, after blood group incompatibility ruled out direct donation within their families.The recipients, Bimla Devi (57) from Dehradun and Kshipra Sharma (38) from Delhi, had been living with advanced kidney failure for a few years, requiring continuous medical supervision. According to doctors, Bimla had been undergoing treatment for progressive kidney disease for more than two years. But her husband, Dara Singh (62), evaluated as a potential donor, was found to be incompatible. Kshipra, who developed chronic kidney disease following long-standing hypertension, had been under treatment for over five years. Her father, Anil Kumar Bharadwaj (63), was also unable to donate directly due to a blood group mismatch.To overcome the impasse, transplant specialists at Max Vaishali arranged a paired, or swap, transplant between the two families. Under this arrangement, Dara donated his kidney to Kshipra, while Anil donated his kidney to Bimla. Dr Neeru P Aggarwal, vice-chairman of neurology and kidney transplant medicine at the hospital, said paired kidney transplantation "helps patients avoid prolonged dependence on dialysis and significantly reduces waiting time for a deceased-donor transplant". Both recipients, doctors said, showed good graft function after surgery, while the donors recovered without major complications.Doctors involved in the casesaid paired exchanges are increasingly being used to widen access to transplantation for patients who might otherwise remain on long-term dialysis despite having family members willing to donate. They added that, when proper protocols and matching are followed, outcomes are comparable to conventional living-donor transplants. As per the NOTTO report, there were 500 kidney transplants across UP in 2024-25 and around 2,500 in Delhi-NCR.