Inside The Operating Room
Once all the above-mentioned tests have been carried out, the donor and the recipient are shifted to the operating theatre. The anesthetist explains about what would happen inside the operating room. After this, the donor and the recipient would be shifted to the operating room, situated close to each other. After administration of a suitable anesthesia, 2 surgical teams work simultaneously during the transplant procedure. One team removes the kidney from the donor while the other team prepares the recipient, and does the actual transplantation. The donor is always left with the better kidney. If the kidneys are similar, then the left kidney is preferred for transplantation. It is a common misconception that both the kidneys of the recipient are removed during renal transplantation. This however does not happen unless there are chances of an infection or possibility of a compromised function, if the original kidneys are left inside the recipient’s body. The new kidney is a supplementation to the existing ones. The donor kidney is usually placed in the lower abdominal region, below the skin surface, in front of the hipbone. Therefore, generally, a renal transplant patient has a total of three kidneys in their body (two old, one new).
A kidney transplant operation usually takes about 3 hours on an average. After the operation, the recipient would be shifted to a recovery room for observation for about half an hour. From there, he/she would be shifted to an Intensive Care Ward.
