In May, a transplant surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, performed a kidney transplant in which the patient was awake with only spinal anesthesia, similar to what is used during cesarean sections.

Vinayak Rohan, MD, FACS, and his anesthesia and surgical support team successfully completed the transplant in under 2 hours. In a first, the kidney recipient was monitored for 23 hours and discharged the next day. The patient, who was identified as an optimal candidate for the awake procedure due to his age and lack of risk factors, reported no pain during the operation. Both the recipient, 28-year-old John Nicholas of Chicago, and the donor, Nicholas’s childhood friend, continue to be in good health.

This successful awake operation could be a step toward increasing access to transplantation for patients who may be at high-risk for general anesthesia and decreasing hospital length of stay.

“We feel that this is the next era for enhanced recovery in the setting of transplantation, moving kidney transplantation from a major operation to a 23-hour observation period,” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, FACS, director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center.

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