Physicians at Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine performed the system's first kidney transplant procedure on an awake patient on May 24.
Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, director of the health system's comprehensive transplant center, performed the surgery with Vinayak Rohan, MD, a transplant surgeon with Northwestern, and Vicente Garcia Tomas, MD, chief of regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in under two hours, according to a June 24 news release from the health system.
"Our hope is that awake kidney transplantation can decrease some of the risks of general anesthesia while also shortening a patient’s hospital stay," Dr. Nadig said in the release. "Inside the operating room, it was an incredible experience being able to show a patient what their new kidney looked like before placing it inside the body."
The procedure used a spinal anesthesia shot rather than general anesthesia, and the 28-year-old patient was discharged less than 24 hours after the surgery, according to the release. The typical hospitalization for patients who undergo a kidney transplant at Northwestern Memorial is two to three days.
Northwestern Medicine intends to establish the AWAKE (Accelerated Surgery Without General Anesthesia in Kidney Transplantation) program for patients who want the operation who cannot safely use general anesthesia or could otherwise benefit from the procedure, according to the release.
"It really opens up a whole new door and is another tool in our toolbelt for the field of transplantation," Dr. Nadig said.