CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — A Chicago man became Northwestern Medicine's first patient to ever receive a kidney transplant while being awake.
John Nicholas, 28, underwent the historic kidney transplantation in May. He was awake during the entire surgery.
"I've always found medicine and medical technology to be really fascinating in the first place," Nicholas said. "Seeing it so up close and personal — and literally, directly applying to me — was a really exciting experience"
Vicente Garcia Tomas, Northwestern Medicine's chief of regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine, said doctors used a spinal anesthetic to numb Nicholas from the chest down, which eliminated the use of narcotics and general anesthesia and cut down Nicholas' recovery time.
"If we can come up with alternatives that bypass some of those interventions, then the idea is that it'll lead to a better experience, a shorter experience," Tomas said.
The process also opens the door to increase access for patients who are high-risk to undergo general anesthesia.
Northwestern transplant surgeon Dr. Satish Nadig said the less doctors have to do to a patient, the better.
"In this scenario the patient gets a kidney transplant but is using their own physiology and their own biology to breathe, talk and interact the entire time," Nadig said.
Nicholas said he felt no pain and was even discharged from the hospital less than 24 hours after the surgery.
"I was going to the bathroom; I was eating solid food, pretty much, you know, fairly back to normal," he said. "I wasn't going to be running a marathon that day, but yeah, I definitely felt good enough to walk out of the hospital."
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