Australian man becomes first robotic kidney transplant recipient after wife donates kidney
Kathmandu, January 10
Australia's Tim Sawley received best ever Christmas gift when her wife donated him kidney.
With Tim suffering from end stage renal failure, inevitable dialysis, and a 50 percent survival rate beyond 5 years, Talitha gave him, as per 9News.
"Feeling, yeah, fantastic considering it was only Wednesday I donated a kidney," said Talitha as quoted by the 9News.
"I was at 7 percent kidney function only a week ago. And the doctors now tell me my kidney function's nearly as good as anyone else now four days later," told Tim.
It was reported that there would be a lot of clinical lead up work before the transplant, but fortuitously, Talitha would be a match. And this is where the second part of their story chimes in.
On the other hand, Tim would become the first person in Australia, to undergo a renal transplant by robotic surgery.
The state of the art surgical robot, called Divinci, is guided by surgeons, but allows for the surgeon's tools to undertake work not humanly possible, including being able to rotate 360 degrees in minute crevasses within the maze of the body's viscera.
"A renal transplant's a complex operation, and previously we were not able to do so using minimal invasive keyhole surgery," told Professor Howard Lau, urologist at Sydney's Westmead Hospital.
But advances using Divinci in different fields, such as prostate and heart surgery, gave surgeons the opportunity to expand its use, and the young and fit Tim Sawley would be the optimum patient.
"We make a small hole just enough for the kidney itself, which is usually about 5 centimetres or so, and that's enough to put the kidney in," said Lau as quoted by 9News.
