New Delhi : Pooja Talwar could not have got a better gift from her husband on the eve of Valentine's Day. The Ghaziabad resident, who has been suffering from kidney failure since last year, recently underwent an organ transplant at a Noida hospital. Her husband, whose organs did not match with hers, donated his kidney to another family for a swap transplant so that Pooja could be saved.
A swap transplant occurs when a living kidney donor is incompatible with the recipient, and hence exchanges kidneys with another donor-recipient pair. Such transplantation enables two incompatible recipients to receive healthy, more compatible, kidneys from each other.
"I could not watch her suffering. So when the doctors told me about another 22-year-old patient suffering from the same condition and in need of a donor with B+ blood group, I readily agreed. His mother donated her kidney for my wife," said Arun Talwar, a businessman.
According to Dr Dushyant Nadar, director of urology and renal transplant at Fortis Noida, who conducted the life-saving procedure, it is rare to have a husband donating his organs to save the wife. "In most cases, the women donate their organs," he said. Both recipients are doing fine post-surgery, the doctor added.
Statistics show that it's women, mostly the wife or the mother, who donate organs. On the other hand, fewer women undergo transplant. "I was ready to do anything. For the last five months, when she was on dialysis, I looked at all possible options, including a transplant using ABO incompatible
