Organizational issues
- This was an extraordinary event in our lives as transplantologists - assessed Prof. Zbigniew Gałązka, Head of the Department of General, Vascular, Endocrine and Transplant Surgery UCC MUW. And he recalled: - On that day I participated in kidney transplants. For these procedures, 12 surgeons had to be brought together at night to perform transplants simultaneously in four rooms. In addition to this, there were also teams of anesthesiologists, operating theater attendants, nephrologists...
If you consider the entire UCC MUW, at one point operations were taking place in 10 rooms in parallel and more than 180 people were involved.
Difficult procedures under time pressure
Prof. Michal Grąt, Head of the Department of General, Transplant and Liver Surgery UCC MUW, when asked about the emotions surrounding the liver transplants he performs, stressed that it is a huge responsibility.
- It's not that when we perform 100 life-saving transplants, we save 100 lives. We perform operations of enormous risk. If we have 100 organs available, it is our duty to give 100 chances. We have to do everything we can to make sure that no organ is "wasted," because that means that some patient will not get a chance to live.
Prof. Grąt also spoke about modern methods of liver storage, which can reduce the risk of complications after transplantation.
Meanwhile, Prof. Bartosz Kubisa, Head of the Clinical Department of Thoracic Surgery UCC MUW, explained how lung transplants are currently performed.
What the objection system is about
During the conversation in the DD TVN studio, the topic of consent for organ harvesting also came up. Experts explained that in Poland we have a system of objections.
- This means that any person who has not objected to organ donation is a potential donor - explained Professor Maciej Kosieradzki, Head of the Department of General and Transplant Surgery UCC MUW. - Objections must be made in writing, i.e. either by registering in the Central Register of Objections or by drawing up a hand-signed document. Only about 20 percent of Poles are aware that this is what Polish law states.
The conversation in the studio was preceded by a report showing the work of our transplant teams. It also featured patients who underwent transplants on January 5 and have now returned home and are starting new lives.
We wrote about the events of January 5 this year at the UCC MUW on our website in the text: Over a dozen transplants in 24 hours