DONATE LIFE

THE HISTORY OF ORGAN DONATION
THE FIRST ORGANS AND TISSUE
TRANSPLANTS IN THE WORLD & INDIA
The idea of organ donation is not new but unlike today, it was considered to be a myth
back in the ancient times. It was only in the middle of the eighteenth century that the
possibility was realised.
One of the major challenges that the early transplant surgeons faced was the
resistance from the immune system. The immune system is built into our body to
fight ‘alien' components that the body thinks to be harmful. The same happened
when an attempt at transplantation was made. Now the question faced by the
doctors was that how to deal with this issue.
CORNEA:
Austrian ophthalmologist, Eduard Konrad Zirm was an ophthalmologist who performed the first
successful human full-thickness corneal transplant on 7 December 1905. The donor was Karl Brauer,
an 11-year old boy who had iron metal bodies lodged in his eyes. The recipient was Alois Glogar, a
45-year-old day labourer whose corneas were damaged. His one eye had a clear vision after the
transplant but other one had complications.
India's first cornea transplant happened in 1948. Dr. RES Muthayya established the nation's first eye
bank in Chennai's Regional Institute Of Ophthalmology and Government Ophthalmic Hospital.
A few years later, it was discovered that some drugs could lower the body's
guard-thus the immune system. It did put the patients at risk of certain infections
but it also made transplant possible.
In 1960, Dr. Peter Medawar introduced a way of typing tissue (similar to the blood
typing of the 1900s) and soon tissue typing along with immune system suppression
was used to carry out an organ transplant.The invention of an immunosuppressant
drug named ‘cyclosporine' made a major breakthrough in the 1980s. In 1986, 9000
kidney transplants were performed in the United States that a good survival rate of
85% in the first year.
KIDNEY:
On June 17, 1950, Dr. Richard Lawler, performed the first kidney transplant. 49-year-old Ruth Tucker
was the recipient and the donor was deceased. It is said that some 40 doctors watched the surgery
that took one hour to perform. Later the kidney was removed due to rejection, some 10 months later.
But those 10 months, helped Ruth survive for another 5 years on her own kidney.
Another kidney transplant was performed on December 23, 1954 in Boston by Dr. Joseph Murray. The
donor was a living one. The transplant was performed between two identical twins, Richard and
Ronald Herrick. Richard needed a kidney and Ronald's kidney matched as there was no rejection. Dr.
Murray got a noble prize for this, years later.
India's first kidney transplant was done by Dr. P.K. Sen and his team at King Edward Memorial
Hospital, Mumbai in May 1965. The recipient died 11 days later due to complications but the kidney was
working properly until death.
20 21