Kolkata: A complex mismatched stem cell transplant has promised Priyanshu Dhara a thalassaemia-free life. A month and half after the procedure at the state-run NRS Medical College & Hospital (NRSMCH), the two-year-eleven-month-old is recovering well and will be soon sent home. This is the first such procedure in a govt hospital in the state.
Priyanshu was just about a year-old when he started suffering from intermittent fever, symptomatic pallor and weakness.Haematology professor Sandeep Saha detected transfusion dependent thalassaemia where even haemoglobin inducing medications failed to work. That is when Saha counselled his parents from stem cell transplant.
Before this, the parents who are from Panskura were not even aware that both were thalassaemia carriers. When both couples are thalassaemia carriers the chance of giving birth to a thalassemic child is around 25%. Luckily, the boy’s elder brother Priyam was found thalassaemia-free and the doctor suggested that the nine-year-old sibling could be the donor.
But on investigation, it was found that while the patient had A-positive, the donor brother belongs to the B-positive blood group. On finding no other fully matched donor in the family the doctors decided to go for the more challenging half matched, haploidentical allogeneic stem cell transplant.
In haploidentical transplant we need to use special medications and sometimes chemotherapy to reduce antibody reaction pre and post the transplant. In this procedure, also, we did the same to reduce graft versus host disease, said Saha, who had also conducted a successful half matched bone marrow transplant on another boy with acute leukaemia.
While such a transplant costs around Rs 40 lakh in a private facility, parents of the boy had to bear the cost of some medications and investigative tests that were not available at the govt facility.
Despite our resource limitations, especially of funds, we will encourage our doctors to deploy their expertise to provide the best of care to patients, said Pit Baran Chakraborty, principal of NRSMCH.
In Bengal, only two govt hospitals — Medical College Kolkata and NRSMCH — have bone marrow transplant units. Even as stem cell transplants had been done on children with cancer, this is the first time the procedure has been conducted on a thalassaemic patient.
Since it was not possible for us to bear the cost in a private facility, Dr Saha called us at NRS. We had full faith in him, said Goutam Dhara, the kid’s father and a goldsmith.
