"KFSH&RC" Continues its Global Record in Children Kidney Transplant by performing 40 Transplant Surgeries within a Year
General
06
February
KFSH&RC successfully completed 208 adult and children kidney tranplants and 16 pancreas tranplants in 2017
King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre- Riyadh (KFSH&RC) succeeded in performing 208 kidney transplants, 40 of which were for children during 2017, to record its continuous presence during the past years as one of the leading world centers in the numbers of children transplant surgeries annually.
Dr. Ibrahim Al Ahmadi, Chairman of Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Surgery Department, KFSH&RC-Riyadh, explained that the last year witnessed the highest number of kidney transplants throughout the history of KFSH&RC with a high success rate of 99.5%. He indicated that the number of transplant surgeries included 34 transplant cases from brain-dead donors and 174 transplants from living donors. He stated that this coincided with 16 pancreatic transplants with 100% success rate in 2017.
Dr. Al-Ahmadi emphasized that KFSH&RC occupies a unique international position after conducting 40 kidney transplants for children aged between 2 and 17 years, which is among the highest-scored numbers of transplants for this age group globally. He added that KFSH&RC has the capability to transplant kidneys for children with low weights between 8.5 to 10 kg, which is only available in limited medical centers in the world.
Dr. Al-Ahmadi clarified that KFSH&RC Department of Kidney Transplant has a distinguished program called "Non-Relative Reciprocal Kidney Transplantation", which was created in 2011 in order to accelerate access to matching kidneys and keep patients from waiting on brain-dead transplant list. He stated that this program has achieved significant leaps during the past year by performing 44 reciprocal transplantations from different families in this field out of the 81 reciprocal transplantations performed in KFSH&RC since the program was launched seven years ago.
He pointed out that over the past two years, this program included children category facilitating an increase of transplants for patients without a matching blood type or immunological compatibility with the relative donors. He also asserted that the Hospital has the capability to perform the “non- relative reciprocal kidney” method among two, three, four and five families simultaneously.
It is indicated that the cumulative number of kidney transplantations in KFSH&RC-Riyadh since the program establishment in 1981 until the end of 2017 reached 3103 transplants for both males and females of different age groups.