Doctors have performed the first U.S. kidney transplant surgery on an awake patient A spinal injection was used to anesthetize him while he remained awake The patient left the hospital the next day MONDAY, June 24, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- John Nicolas was deep into kidney transplant surgery when he decided to ask his doctors if they’d started yet.
“At one point during surgery, I recall asking, ‘Should I be expecting the spinal anesthesia to kick in?’” Nicolas, 28, recalled in a news release. “They had already been doing a lot of work and I had been completely oblivious to that fact. Truly, no sensation whatsoever.
” Nicolas, a Chicago resident, is the first person known to receive a kidney transplant while awake in the United States, say his doctors at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. Instead of using the normal general anesthesia, doctors used a single spinal anesthesia injection to numb Nicolas while allowing him to remain alert. This new option could make transplantation available to patients whose health makes them a high risk for general anesthesia, doctors say.
It also could substantially decrease the length of a transplant patient’s hospital stay. Nicolas walked out of the hospital the day after his successful surgery, which occurred on May 24. Typically, kidney transplant patients spend two to three days in the hospital, doctors said.
“Inside the operating room, it was an incredible experience being able to show a patient what their new kidney looke.
