GEM Hospital team of doctors feels a great sense of fulfillment after renewing a lease on life of a young man from Pattukkottai

Chennai, 20^th January 2024: Team of doctors from GEM Hospital and Research Centre, Chennai has successfully performed a series of complicated surgeries and a criticalkidney transplant procedure on a 21 year old young man from Pattukkottai in Tamilnadu who had initially reported to the hospital of kidney failure. 

Aravind (name changed) had his own struggles against not one but many life threatening diseases at this very young age. The patient was diagnosed with a known case of chronic kidney disease and referred for kidney transplantation, developed abdomen pain, found to have Acute Pancreatitis, Pancreatic Abscess, Sepsis which lead to Septic shock requiring ventilatory support, drug resistant intra abdominal lymph nodeTuberculosis (TB), and affected by Guillain-Barre syndrome – a debilitating neurological disease. Also, he had pre-transplant immunological challenges followed by a stormy post operative period.

The patient was admitted in GEM Hospital Chennai on 6^thApril’23 and discharged on 18^th December’23 after a successful surgery. Now, a month after the transplant, the kidney is stable and Aravind is feeling good. 

Dr. P. Senthilnathan, Surgical Gastroenterologist & Director, GEM Hospital said “Initially, the patient had suffered from severe abdominal pain and needed a scan, which showed the presence of many lymph node enlargements in stomach and infection in pancreas (Pancreatic abscess). We did a surgery to drain the abscess and removed dead tissue from the pancreas. Later, biopsy reports confirmed the lymph node enlargements in his stomach are nothing but the presence of drug resistant intra abdominal lymph node Tuberculosis (TB)”.

“Aravind was in ICU for a month. After 2 months of medication and when we were about to plan for the transplant, we found a difference in his walking as it was wobbly and abnormal. A complete Neurological examination revealed the occurrence of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) which is a debilitating neurological disease. It is a rare condition in which a person’s immune system attacks the peripheral nerves. So, a special plasma exchange treatment called Plasmapheresis was carried out as many times as required. It eventually helped him to quickly stop GBS from spreading to other parts of the body which may have lead to paralysis”, Dr. Senthilnathan further added.

Dr. K. Balamukunthan, Nephrologist, GEM Hospital said, “We regularly monitored Aravind’s vitals for two more months and finally decided to do this high risk kidney transplant.Thankfully, donor kidney was not an issue as the patient’s mother came forward to donate her kidney to her son. The procedure was carried out as planned and the transplanted kidney started responding. Few days later, a post surgery complication had occurred and was attended at the right time. An emergency surgery was done without any delay to fix theblood leakage in the transplanted area. Currently his kidney is secure and he is coping up well to the treatment”.

Elaborating on the post transplant emergency surgery which was performed on Michaung cyclone day (4^th Dec 2023), Dr. Senthilnathan said, “The weather condition had definitelyadded more pressure on the team as most of our surgeons werestuck at home. I took the responsibility and stepped out of the house with my car. But, I had to stop the car midway as the roads were inconvenient for driving. I waded through the fast flowing knee deep waters for further 4 kms to reach the hospital and attended the surgery which gave us a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment even in adverse conditions”.

Speaking about the surgery Dr. S. Asokan, CEO and Director, GEM Hospital Chennai mentioned that, “It is clearly evident in this case as early screening and detection of disease, timely and accurate surgery eliminates the risk. GEM hospital has been a center of excellence for doing such complex surgeries with laparoscopic and robotic techniques for decades”.

Dr. C. Palanivelu, Chairman, GEM Hospitals, who is a visionary and pioneer Laparoscopic and Robotic surgeon, lauded the team (Dr. P.Senthilnathan – Surgical Gastroenterologist, Dr. K. Balamukunthan – Nephrologist, Dr.Vaanmathi – Anesthesiologist, and Dr.Yuvaraj – Urologist) for their commendable effort and mentioned that GEM Hospital has always strived to raise the standards of medicine with advanced technology and will continue to do so.