Young poodle returns home following successful kidney transplant at University of Florida

A poodle named Benji who underwent a successful kidney transplant at the University of Florida’s Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital returned home to Sebastian, Fla., the night of April 17, a week after the operation.

UF is the second veterinary institution in the country ever to have performed such a procedure in a clinical patient.

Benji’s mother, Snowstar, was the organ donor.

“Mother and son are doing fine,” said Chris Adin, D.V.M., an assistant professor and small animal surgeon at UF who led the four-hour procedure, in which both animals were operated on simultaneously.

“They were both anesthetized, on tables next to each other. The kidney is harvested from the donor dog by one team of surgeons, while another team prepares the blood vessels in the recipient so that the kidney can be attached to those blood vessels as rapidly as possible.” Adin, who performed canine kidney transplants during his residency training at the University of California-Davis’ veterinary school, said the most technically difficult part of the procedure involves surgically connecting the blood vessels from the recipient to the renal vein and artery.

“When we’re done, the recipient dog has three kidneys, his original two that are poorly functional, and the new kidney,” Adin said. Benji’s owners, Barbara and Alan Bland of Sebastian, first became aware that their dog had kidney problems during a routine blood test conducted by their veterinarian prior to an appointment to have Benji neutered. Benji was six months old at the time.

“Our veterinarian, Dr. Jeff Slade, told me, ‘I have some bad news for you. Benji’s kidneys are deformed, and he has a congenital birth defect.’ I said, ‘What does that mean?’ and he said, ‘He’s a very sick puppy and he only has a couple of months to live.’”

Devastated, the Blands gave Benji a special diet which seemed to lower the levels of toxins in his body.

However, in late December the levels started rising again and the Blands went on the Internet to learn more about kidney transplantation. Through the Internet and with help from Slade, they located Adin and called him at UF. Soon after, they had an appointment.

“Meanwhile, Benji was doing great,” Barbara Bland said. “He was up to 46 pounds, and you’d never know he was sick except that he threw up every now and then.”

After examining Benji and performing various diagnostic tests, Adin confirmed that Benji was experiencing kidney failure and that the couple needed to seek out a donor, preferably a relative of the dog. The Blands were able to locate one of Benji’s siblings, but she also proved to have kidney disease. Then, with help from the individual they bought Benji from, they located the breeder who had Benji’s mother — a white standard poodle named Snowstar. Subsequent blood tests showed Snowstar would be a good donor match.

“The breeder was very cooperative,” Barbara Bland said. “We drove up to Alabama, where she lived, and we adopted Snowstar two weeks before the procedure.”

Only 24 canine kidney transplants, counting Benji’s, have been performed in the United States since the University of California-Davis pioneered the program in 1984. Thus far the survival rate is about 50 percent, said Lynda Bernsteen, D.V.M., who heads UC-Davis’ veterinary college transplantation program.

“Dr. Clare Gregory started this program for dogs and cats,” Bernsteen said. “He performed about 12 transplants in dogs through 1994. However, due to a poor success rate and high incidence of graft rejection, we abandoned this program unless the patient met very specific requirements and had a related donor.”

In 1999, veterinarians discovered that a new form of cyclosporine, an anti-rejection drug, appeared to be more effective in preventing rejection than its predecessor, and UC-Davis renewed its program.

Since then, 11 transplants have been performed there, with five currently surviving, Bernsteen said. The only other veterinary institution that has performed canine kidney transplants is in Canada at the University of Ontario in Guelph, she added.

Adin said the cost of the procedure ranged from between $4,000 and $6,000 for both donor and recipient, depending on the level of complications.

He added that the procedure was “an enormous team effort.” “It takes a contribution from everyone on the hospital staff to make something like this happen,” Adin said.