Dubai Hospital, a leading healthcare centre hospital under the Dubai Health Authority network, has become the first hospital in Dubai to offer kidney transplantation services.

The hospital has recently opened the kidney transplantation clinic and the first transplantation will be conducted in mid-2014, said Dr Abdulrazzak Al Madani, CEO of Dubai Hospital.

“Dubai Hospital, which has the Renal and Urology Disease Departments, has seen a steep rise in the number of patients with kidney diseases. While we provide dialysis service to hundreds of patients and the numbers are on the rise, we realized there is a need for introducing kidney transplantation services so that patients do not need to travel abroad for this service,” he said.

“By providing this service locally, we will be able to reduce the time these patients spend in hospitals for dialysis, improve their work and exercise capacity, and overall health and life expectancy, so that they lead a normal life and resume their fulltime employment.”

Dubai’s First “Transplantation Clinic” has gathered interest from both nationals and expatriates and the clinic now runs every Monday afternoon.

Dr Farhad Kheradmand Aljanahi, specialist urologist and transplant surgeon in Dubai Hospital is leading this initiative and a multidisciplinary transplant committee of DHA is organizing the efforts for the “First Kidney Transplant Surgery in Dubai” that will be performed in the second quarter of 2014.

Initially, the team will focus on transplantations from live and related donors and the service will be in par with the international transplant guidelines and ethics.

Dr Aljanahi said: “A large percentage of our patients develop chronic kidney disease as a secondary complication of diabetes and/or high blood pressure, which are both becoming increasingly prevalent in our region. Many of them gradually proceed to end-stage kidney disease and kidney transplantation offers them a better life- both in the short and long term as opposed to treatment with continuous dialysis.”

The transplantation surgeries will be performed in collaboration with a specialist transplant team from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Beaumont Hospital, Dublin which hosts Ireland’s National Kidney Transplant Centre and is one of the leading Kidney & Pancreas Transplantation Centers in Europe.

Prof David Hickey, who is the director of transplantation at the Beaumont Hospital, will oversee the service in Dubai as well. – TradeArabia News Service