Those who undergo delicate surgical procedures usually find themselves having to deal with the risky general anesthesia. But what happened to 74-year-old man from Illinois, Harry Stackhouse, is different. The man was in fact underwent a very delicate kidney transplant operation while he was awakeThe surgery in question was performed at Northwestern Medicine on July 15, and the person who performed the surgery was Satish Nadig, director of the Chicago hospital system’s Comprehensive Transplant Center.
The patient revealed in a recent interview with AFP that he saw everything during the operation and that he spoke a lot with the doctors, who also gave him the opportunity to see the kidney. But above all, he revealed that not having felt any pain at all. Dr. Nadig instead revealed to AFP that in the field of transplants today we are at a turning point.
In fact, it is possible to use new technologies to enter a new era. According to Nadig, the results obtained are so satisfactory that we should start questioning the paradigms that doctors have adhered to until now.
The big turning point
Il kidney transplant on awake patient performed on Harry Stackhouse, a 74-year-old father of six and a professional painter and decorator, was a great success. Christopher Sonnenday, director of the Transplant Center at the University of Michigan Health, praised the Transplant Center team for their groundbreaking work in kidney transplantation.
It should be noted that limiting the patient’s exposure to general anesthesia also means accelerating his recovery process. Stackhouse in fact he was discharged after 36 hours and after a short time he was able to return to his daily life. The man remained under observation a few hours longer, given his age, than the patient operated in May who instead remained in the hospital for only 24 hours. Very little time compared to patients undergoing general anesthesia who usually remain in the hospital for 5-7 days.
