Spain and Italy Conduct First Cross Kidney Transplant In Southern Europe
Health News
Published: 15 August 2018 14:24 CET
Updated: 15 August 2018 16:24 CET
A new medical development as Spain and Italy lead the way in conducting the first international cross kidney transplant in southern Europe. With a patient in both Spain and Italy, a living donor helped with a kidney transplant by exchanging organs between respective donors.
The operations were a success with donors and recipients in perfect health and discharged from hospital. All of the extractions and transplants took place on the same day at Ospedale Cisanello in Pisa and Fundació Puigvert in Barcelona.
The cross-kidney transplant aims to offer patients who have chronic kidney failure to receive a kidney from living donors when partners and family are incompatible. The system requires meticulous logistical planning, especially with internationalisation and organisation between the two countries.
Spain is leading the way with cross kidney transplants, after joining the cross kidney transplant programme over ten years ago and conducting over 190 transplants of this kind in the country. Medics claim it is possible thanks to new less invasive surgical techniques and reduced complications for donors making it a low-risk procedure.
While cross kidney transplants are common in the UK, Australia, United States and Canada, this was the first operation of its kind in southern Europe and hopes to show how achievable it can be.
Image courtesy of Jordiferrer [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], from Wikimedia Commons
