Cape Town - After a decade of battling with kidney failure affecting her life and livelihood, a 35-year-old Groote Schuur Hospital patient was finally able to find a new lease on life after special technology was acquired by the hospital.
Chervon Meyer, from Rocklands in Mitchells Plain, underwent a kidney transplant operation at the famous hospital on January 25. What made the operation unique was that her donor, her brother Joshua Swail, 24, was not of the same blood group.
The operation was made possible by a filter, Glycosorb ABO, which allows people with different blood types to have transplants. It was a first for Africa, but a similar operation was conducted at the UCT Private Academic Hospital last week.
In December 2013, Meyer was due to give birth to her third child at the Mowbray Maternity Hospital but had a still birth and her kidneys failed during that time. She was transferred to Groote Schuur and into the hospital’s renal dialysis programme.
Meyer said she has been on dialysis “since I was pregnant”.
“I lost a baby, and ended up on dialysis. It was the toughest time of my life.
“People were tested and weren't matches but thanks to this new filter, finally after 10 years, I can say that I am finally going to be healthy, normal, and be able to go and work again now.
“I'm grateful to my brother, at his young age, for giving me the kidney. No more suffering for me now, no more dialysis, no more coming in three times a week for dialysis, thanks to the new filter.”
Across the province, 1 900 people are on renal dialysis treatment and 500 awaiting a kidney transplant.
GSH nephrologist Dr Zunaid Barday said: “Whenever we do a transplant, especially from a living donor, we always have to do a blood group compatible transplant, so if you try to transplant a kidney or any organ from an incompatible donor, it would reject immediately, within a few minutes.
“But there is this new type of filter available now that allows us within reason, it depends on how either the recipient or patient is going to get the organ, how high their antibody levels are.
“But if they’re not too high, this filter can very efficiently remove those antibodies and then allow us to do the transplant very safely.”
Barday said the filter developed by Glycorex Transplantation in Sweden, has been available in Europe for some time, but it's never been used in the country.
Through it, more patients will be able to access transplantation.
shakirah.thebus@inl.co.za