On July 15, Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine performed its second-ever awake kidney transplant. The patient was a 74-year-old man, who left the hospital after 36 hours.
He shared his experience in an Aug. 7 news release from the health system, recounting the ease of the procedure and the recovery that followed, sharing that his recovery was faster than that of his 45-year-old daughter, who went under general anesthesia to donate a kidney to her father.
The benefits of the procedure for patients and for health systems –– which face a shortage of anesthesia providers –– could be a promising development for kidney transplants and other surgeries.
Northwestern said in a June 24 news release that it seeks to establish the Accelerated Surgery Without General Anesthesia in Kidney Transplantation (AWAKE) program for patients who want the operation, cannot have general anesthesia, are high-risk or otherwise fit into a category where an awake procedure could benefit them.
Patients are anesthetized using a spinal anesthesia shot, avoiding intubation entirely. While kidney transplants have been performed on awake patients in the past, it has only recently become fully embraced as a practice at Northwestern.
"The AWAKE Program opens the door for countless patients like [the 74-year-old patient], who can get home and get back to doing what they love with the people they love much quicker,"Satish Nadig, MD, director of Northwestern's Comprehensive Transplant Center and the surgeon who led the procedure, said in the release.
He credited the success to advances such as targeted anesthetic blocks, avoiding opioid narcotics and encouraging patients to eat early.
The first patient, a 28-year-old man who underwent the procedure in May, was discharged 24 hours after the procedure –– hospitalizations for a kidney transplant at Northwestern are typically two to three days.