Transplantation Scenario in India Today

Abstract

The incidence of end organ damage and irreversible organ failure is rising in India today at a faster rate than ever before. The rising incidence of diabetes mellitus and life style diseases has made its impact to produce this scenario. The alarming fact is that organ transplantation has not increased to the extent needed to counter this health problem. Thus more people die with irreversible renal failure, liver failure and heart failure than get treated with proper organ transplantation at the correct time. More often it is due to inadequate number of centres performing the procedures, high mismatch between the number of patients waiting for transplantation and the number of available transplantable organs, poor financial resources and the high cost of the operative procedures and cost of postoperative Immunosuppression therapy. With the setting up of the Indian Transplant Registry, transplant related data from various centres in India are collected and collated to derive information regarding the number of transplants done in the country, essential demographic data of Indian patients undergoing transplant, the immunosuppressive regimen used in various centres, the short term and long term results of the allograft, complications during the management in short term and long term, patient survival after transplants, the HLA profile of Indian patients, numbers of living and cadaver transplants, relationship in case of related transplants, and profile of donors, Figures being mentioned are 1,50,000 patients waiting for renal transplantation while only 5000 get timely renal transplantation done. Nearly 1,00,000 patients reach end stage liver disease and a much lower number get timely liver transplantation.