Kidney Stone Management: Why Stones Are Never a Silent Disease

Whenever a brain-dead donor is identified anywhere in Delhi NCR, India's national organ transplant authority (NOTTO) is notified and coordinates two brain stem death declarations roughly two hours apart, made jointly by the primary caregiver and a neurointensivist or equivalent specialist. Once the family consents, NOTTO allocates the organ from its waiting list strictly by turn order across hospitals, no single centre can claim it outside that process. From the first declaration to organ harvest is roughly a 12-hour process, with the recipient's dialysis and cross-match run in parallel so the transplant can proceed within six to twelve hours of harvest.

This is antibody-mediated rejection (AMR), one of two categories of acute rejection alongside cell-mediated rejection (ACR), and a kidney biopsy is needed to tell them apart. Treatment usually starts with methylprednisolone pulses, escalating to anti-thymocyte globulin or plasmapheresis if that isn't enough. In over a decade, hyperacute rejection has not been seen in blood-compatible transplants at this centre, and most rejection today is reversible when caught and treated promptly, the real danger comes from delayed treatment, not from the rejection episode itself.

Donation has to come from love and compassion, never pressure. What actually works is reframing donation as a chance for the donor to become healthier: the thorough medical workup required for donor clearance means any underlying problem gets caught and treated, so donors go on to outlive their peer group rather than being harmed by donating. Where genuine pressure would otherwise be needed, keeping the recipient on dialysis while continuing to look for a willing donor is the ethical path, alongside broader deceased-donor campaigns to reduce reliance on living donors altogether.

It is being tried, but the outlook is not promising because of tissue rejection and the risk of transmitting animal viruses, including parvovirus, into the recipient, so the success of xenotransplantation is still genuinely questionable. Far more promising is tissue-engineered, artificially grown organs: a related technique already in use is tissue-engineered buccal mucosa grafting for urethral stricture, where a small piece of cheek tissue is cultured in a lab and implanted into the urethra, a real, working example of the technology-biology merger that is likely to define the field's near future.

A routine mini-incision laparoscopic transplant package costs approximately USD 13,000-14,000, with an additional USD 3,000 for a fully robotic transplant. Donor selection starts with a related donor within the immediate family, confirmed by DNA testing, with extended family only considered if no closer relative is eligible, alongside blood-group and basic health workup. Transplant is generally advised once creatinine exceeds 7, with signs of fluid overload or hyperkalaemia, shrunken kidneys with reduced urine output, and a raised PTH indicating the kidneys will not recover, with an practical age ceiling of around 80 depending on the patient's actual physiological fitness.

RIRS uses a flexible ureteroscope passed into the kidney to fragment stones with a laser and remove the pieces, with no incision, minimal blood loss and typically a one-day hospital stay. With a thulium fibre laser, it can clear stones up to around 2.5 to 3 cm.

Stones are a metabolic disease that increases in size, obstructs the urinary tract and damages the kidney over time, even when a patient has no symptoms. His standing advice is that every stone found should be treated, not observed.