Chennai, July 20 (IANS) A hospital in this Tamil Nadu capital city Sunday inaugurated a centre that will conduct complex kidney transplants using Japanese technology where the donor and the recipient need not have the same blood groups. The MIOT group (Madras Institute of Orthopaedics and Traumacare) has started the Institute of Nephrology in collaboration with the Tokyo Women’s Medical University, which has pioneered advanced kidney transplant technologies for many decades.

Normally when the donor and the recipient have different blood groups, the recipient’s body develops antibodies against the donor’s blood. The patient’s body then rejects the organ. Blood group matches are, therefore, imperative in organ transplants.

The institute will offer “kidney transplants across blood groups”. This means, anyone can donate a kidney to anyone, the blood group of donor and recipient do not have to match.

The procedure can revolutionise kidney transplant in India, where according to an AIIMS study every year 150,000 new kidney patients are added to the existing burden and diabetes and blood pressure cause a large number of kidney failures.

“This will hugely increase India’s kidney donor pool,” said P.V.A. Mohandas, the managing director of MIOT Hospital.

“We have entered into a knowhow and technology exchange understanding with the Japanese university,” he added.

“Japan is a pioneer in the field of incompatible blood group transplants,” Kazunari Tanabe, head of department of urology at the Graduate School of Medicine in the Tokyo Women’s Medical University, said here Sunday.

“Japan wants to associate with other Asian countries for further research in this technology and that is why we have decided to associate with this Indian institution,” Tanabe said.

The MIOT Institute of Nephrology, set up with an initial funding of about Rs.100 million, will provide about a 100 dialysis a day and will have two dedicated operation theatres for nephrology cases. It starts off with about 30 transplants a month.

Of every hundred patients treated at the institute, 20 will be poor patients whose treatment will be subsidised.