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| | | KNIFE TO SKIN
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Go to the Listen Again page | | | | | A gripping tale from the operating theatre | | | |
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Knife to Skin returns to Radio 4 with another table-side view of life-saving surgery. This time, it's a live-donor kidney transplant - with a twist.
| | |  | | | Professor Nadey Hakim (l); William and Anna Macdonald (r) |  |  Listen again to the programme | |
Graham Easton scrubs up and joins the surgery team at St Mary's Hospital in London in the operating theatre to witness a remarkable gift from husband to wife.
The surgeons will remove one of William Macdonald's kidneys and transplant it into his wife, Anna, who is suffering from end-stage kidney failure.
"It's the best present you can offer anyone, let alone your wife," says Director of Surgery Nadey Hakim, who'll be performing both operations consecutively.
It'll take around two hours to "harvest" William's kidney, followed by about an hour to transfer it into Anna.
It's actually the surgery on William that's the most risky part, as surgeon Nadey Hakim explains: "Out of all the procedures you can ever do this is most delicate, because you're dealing with a live, healthy donor. This has to go well; it can't be 95 percent, it has to be 100 percent."
For William and Anna it's a tense time but one filled more with hope than with fear. As Anna says, "it's bit of an emotional whirlwind really - we've had sadness, joy, crying, smiles - a mixed bag of everything really."
Click here to find out about the first series of Knife to Skin, broadcast in March 2004. | | |
RELATED LINKS | | | British Kidney Patient Association
National Kidney Federation
Kidney Patient Guide
National Kidney Research Fund
Diabetes UK
UK Transplant
St Mary's NHS Trust
BBC Health
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