Senior Reporter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt
It took a father’s love and a Trinidadian surgeon’s steady hands to come together in a special moment that not only saved a life, but also made medical history in the Caribbean.
Last month, T&T’s Dr Yardesh Singh, an Advanced Laparoscopic Surgeon, successfully led The Bahamas’ first-ever keyhole kidney removal surgery—a groundbreaking procedure that paved the way for a life-saving transplant.
The operation took place during the 23rd annual conference of the Caribbean College of Surgeons (CCS), a gathering designed to promote regional collaboration and expand surgical capacity in the Caribbean. While the setting was Bahamian, the heart of the story belongs to the entire region, as the harvesting and surgical teams came from various countries.
The patient, a 45-year-old Bahamian man, was facing the harsh realities of kidney failure. Without a transplant, his life would have revolved around dialysis treatments, typically required twice a week, just to stay alive. The toll on his health and quality of life would have been immense.
But then came an extraordinary gesture: his 66-year-old father stepped forward to donate one of his kidneys.
“Normally, it would be the other way around. Young people would give to their parents. This is the first time I have seen a father have to give to his son,” Singh said.
The procedure Singh performed is known in medical terms as a laparoscopic donor nephrectomy, but more commonly referred to as keyhole kidney removal.
It involves making several tiny incisions in the donor’s abdomen to access and remove the kidney using specialised instruments and a camera, rather than large open surgery. The goal is to reduce pain, speed up recovery and leave very little scarring.
“In this case, we removed the kidney safely through a five-centimetre incision, similar to what’s done in a C-section.”
The entire removal took approximately three hours, followed by another three hours to implant the kidney into the recipient. The outcome was successful. The donor, despite being in his mid-60s, recovered remarkably well and was discharged from hospital just two days later.
While this was a first for The Bahamas, Singh noted that T&T has been performing this advanced surgery for several years, particularly at Medical Associates Hospital.
Singh said it was important to highlight that T&T has the capability to do these operations, as they have been doing so for years.
“We have a lot of patients in Trinidad and Tobago with renal failure that need kidney transplants, and we should be able to do this more often.”
Dr Singh, who also heads the Year Five Surgical Programme at the University of the West Indies (UWI), led a team that included two Bahamian doctors. The implant was completed by a separate surgical team from The Bahamas and Barbados, an example of the regional collaboration the CCS conference seeks to strengthen.
The broader aim of these medical outreach initiatives is to build long-term self-sufficiency. The CCS aims to build capacity in each country it visits so that when its team departs, the local healthcare system can continue to perform these new surgeries independently. The team has already identified doctors who are capable of carrying out various stages of the operation.
“We want to build more capacity, so in other words, if they have more kidney transplants to do, we can go back in to help them, but they would be taking the lead in what is to be done.”
For The Bahamas, this has wider implications. Expanding transplant services could significantly ease the country’s healthcare burden, particularly by reducing the financial and logistical strain of long-term dialysis treatment.
