U.S. surgeons remove kidney through donors' vagina

Baltimore, February 3: The surgeons in the United States on Thursday performed the first of its kind surgery in which a healthy kidney was removed out of a donor's vagina for the purpose of organ donation.

48-year-old, Kimberly Johnson of Lexington Park, Maryland donated one of her kidneys to her 23-year-old niece, Jennifer Gilbert from Baltimore, who needed the first kidney transplant due to repeated infections which destroyed her both kidneys and had to undergo the second surgery after she began suffering chronic rejection.

Doctors reported that both were both doing well after surgeries on Thursday.

Dr Robert Montgomery, chief of the transplant division at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore said, “The kidney was successfully removed and transplanted into the donor's niece, and both patients are doing fine. As far as we know, no one has ever applied this type of procedure to a donor kidney."

The best part was that with this new surgical procedure, donating a kidney could be almost scar free. Usually kidneys are donated through laparoscopic surgeries, through small keyhole incisions in the abdomendefine of the patient.

In the three-and-a-half-hour operation surgeons made a smile-shaped incision in the back of Johnsons’ vagina and inserted an inflatable bag through a tube to hold the incision open and the kidney was then pulled out intact.

"As far as we know, no one has ever applied this type of procedure to a donor kidney," Dr. Robert Montgomery said.

The new procedure will encourage more kidney donations as it reduces scarring, pain and leads to faster recovery. Johnson said the procedure was easier than childbirth and less painful than gall bladderdefine surgery.

Adding further Dr Montgomery said, "It's another step toward really reducing the impact of the operation on the donor."

According to the National Kidney Foundation, almost 100,000 people are awaiting kidney transplants.