Claiming significant improvements in survival of patients, the kidney transplant unit of the SCB Medical College Hospital here performed the 100th kidney transplantation on Wednesday. This milestone was achieved in four years after the first renal transplantation done here on March 19, 2012.
Basking in in-house applause, hospital Urology Department Head Prof Datteswar Hota said his unit is the only Government setup in eastern India to have achieved this landmark, and he plans to perform 100 more kidney transplantations in next two years by introducing robotic transplant surgeries.
But when asked about the morbidity and mortality rate of the patients’ undergone transplantation, Prof Hota said reports of 14 recipient deaths have reached them so far. The hospital has, however, no mechanism to keep track of the patients once the routine post-surgery checkups are over after six months.
According to information obtained through the RTI Act in 2013, out of 27 kidney transplantations done by then, eight had died within one year of their surgery. When the one-year survival rate at national level was pegged at 95 per cent, the SCB hospital registered a poor 71 per cent in this front.
Prof Hota, however, could not explain as to why the hospital or, for that matter, the State Government was not able to keep track of the morbidity and mortality of the patients when the Government bears the entire cost of their surgery in a state-of-the-art modular OT with costly modern gadgets.
The renal transplantation programme here is only for poor patients of below-poverty line (BPl) and is fully subsidised by the Government through its Odisha State Treatment Fund. The Government also provides another `90,000 to the patients for post-surgery medicines at the rate of `15,000 per month for six months only even as a patient requires almost same amount for medicines every month for the rest of the life.