NEW DELHI: Doctors at a city private hospital have removed from the body of a 45-year-old a kidney weighing 2.75kg, equal to the weight of a newborn child. The patient suffered from ADPKD-autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease-a congenital disorder. It caused his kidneys to swell and develop multiple cysts filled with fluid. A normal kidney weighs only 130 grams.

"The dimensions of this huge kidney are 33 X 20 X 20 cubic cm. It's the largest one in the world removed till date," claimed Dr Manu Gupta, consultant urological surgeon at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital who performed the procedure. He said the Guinness World Records reports a kidney weighing 2.15kg as the world's largest. That organ was removed in Dhule, Maharashtra, in 2011.

Dr Gupta said the patient was under treatment at SGRH for nearly a year.

"Last month, he presented with chronic renal failure -severe pain in abdomen, blood in urine and high grade fever. His condition was deteriorating because of sepsis in kidneys. He was losing a lot of blood. That's why we decided to remove both the kidneys," the doctor said.

Gupta said the procedure was quite challenging. "This kidney weighed 2.75kg which is 20 times more than normal and was stuck to the surrounding intestines. It took us three hours of difficult dissection to remove the kidney. The second kidney weighing 2.5kg was also removed a week later. The patient's body was bearing an extra weight of about five kilograms," Dr Gupta said.

According to Dr Vinant Bhargav, consultant nephrologist at the hospital, the patient is currently on dialysis and waiting to undergo kidney transplant. "ADPKD is one of the commonest inherited disorders with approximately 12.5 million cases worldwide," he said. He added that pre-transplant nephrectomies (removal of kidneys) is occasionally necessary in such situations.