COVENTRY HOSPITAL DOES PIONEERING SURGERY

A PIONEERING technique has helped a woman save her sister from kidney failure.

A ground-breaking freezing method has been used for the very first time at Coventry’s University Hospital, which has allowed an ‘incompatible’ kidney transfer to take place.

Maxine Bath, 41, from Wolverhampton, developed kidney failure when she was 20, and has been on dialysis for the past 15 years.

Ten years ago family members were tested to see if any of them would make suitable donors, but none were compatible because Maxine’s body produced antibodies against the ‘living’ donor tissue.

Then 12 months ago Maxine’s blood pressure suddenly dropped. She needed treatment quickly to stop her going blind.

So, surgeons at University Hospital, in Walsgrave, decided to take drastic action, freezing Maxine’s blood, and skimming off the guilty antibodies, so she could be given her younger
sister Michelle’s kidney – without it being rejected.

Michelle Titmus said: “It’s been very difficult to see Maxine getting slowly worse, knowing that there wasn’t anything we could do to help her. When it started to sink in that I was actually going to be able to do this for my sister, I was so excited.

“I just keep thinking she doesn’t have to have dialysis anymore – how great is that?”

Maxine’s blood pressure was so low, University Hospital could not use its normal machine to remove the antibodies, in case it made her condition even worse.

So, renal consultation Rob Higgins and his team used a ‘cryofiltration’ system to remove the plasma from Maxine and Michelle’s blood.

They chilled it to zero degrees, and filtered off the antibodies, before re-warming the plasma, and returning it to the patient.

Both sisters had their blood skimmed five times before the transplant in November last year. Hospital bosses think this is the first transplant to use the process, which allows the patient to receive a ‘non-matched’ organ.

Maxine said: “I already feel healthier.

“Rob told me I was the first kidney patient in the world to try this, which is really exciting. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet.”

Mr Higgins said: “This opens the doors of donation for more kidney patients awaiting transplants.”