Bengaluru boy gets new lease of life after double transplant

Bengaluru resident D Shakeer, who had been suffering from Type-1 Diabetes since the age of 12, got a new lease of life after the first successful simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplant in Karnataka was performed at BGS Global Hospital five weeks ago.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Shakeer said he would like to thank the organ donors' families and the medical experts who helped him. ''This Bakrid will mean a lot for me and my family,'' he added.

''The doctors said that I had developed diabetes-related complications like retinopathy, diabetic nephropathy and end-stage kidney failure. For the last two years, my family had a struggle to raise money to support dialysis,'' he added.

His aged parents, Bibijan and Bashu, and brother Basheer, were finding it increasingly difficult to manage as their ailing son required repeated admissions following infections. So, they registered his name for a renal transplant with the Zonal Coordination Committee of Karnataka for Transplantation (ZCCK).

Dr Anil Kumar, consultant nephrologist at BGS Global Hospitals, who treated Shakeer, said, ''He had initially come to us for consideration of a kidney transplant. However, due to poor diabetes control, it was decided that only a combined pancreas and kidney transplant would help the patient.''

Dr Sonal Asthana, consultant organ transplant surgeon, said, ''The operation lasted around seven hours. We did not remove any diseased organs from the body. The new kidney was placed on the lower left side of the abdomen and connected to the nearby blood vessels and the bladder. The ureter was attached to the bladder. The pancreas was connected to blood vessels on the lower right side of the abdomen. The pancreas and the kidney worked right away, and Shakeer did not require any insulin soon after the surgery was completed.''