Doctors at Chợ Rẫy Hospital in HCM City perform the country’s first ABO-incompatible living-donor kidney transplant on a 54-year-old man with end-stage renal disease. Photo courtesy of the hospital

HCM CITY — Chợ Rẫy Hospital in HCM City has successfully conducted the country’s first ABO-incompatible living-donor kidney transplant.

Trần Thị Hạnh, 51, of Bến Tre Province volunteered to donate one of her kidneys to her husband, Vi Văn Biết, 54, who had end-stage renal disease and has been on dialysis for more than a year.

Her blood type is A and his is B.

The surgery was done on December 29 and the couple are now in stable condition.

To prepare for the transplant, the patient received treatment to lower antibody levels in his blood and reduce the risk of his antibodies rejecting the donor kidney, doctors said.

Assoc Prof Thái Minh Sâm, head of the hospital’s department of urology, said around 300 patients register for a kidney transplant at the hospital every year, but only a third of them undergo surgery due to various reasons, including having a living donor with a different blood type.

ABO-incompatible kidney transplant is performed in many countries, and the hospital has sent doctors and surgeons to leading hospitals abroad to learn the procedure in recent years, Sâm said.

Given the severe shortage of deceased donors, the ABO-incompatible living donor kidney transplant would help more patients who are on dialysis to get a transplant, he added. —VNS