Record number of lung transplants in Poland. “Success is all the more valuable because there has been no increase in donors”

Mr. Krzysztof Soszka from the Lublin Voivodeship is one of almost a hundred patients who received new lungs in Poland last year. Before, he could barely breathe. And what is it like now? – There are moments when I would choke on this air – says the man.

98 lung transplants in Poland – we have never had such a good annual result. Doctors from Kraków, Szczecin, the Medical University of Warsaw, the State Medical Institute, Gdańsk and Zabrze contributed to the success. – The success is all the more valuable because there has been no increase in the number of donors in our country, unfortunately this is the Achilles’ heel of transplant programs – emphasizes Dr. Maciej Urlik, cardiac surgeon and transplantologist at the Silesian Center for Heart Diseases in Zabrze.

There are no more donors, but there are more transplants because we have better and better knowledge about transplanted organs and we have better and better technology, doctors emphasize. – Like all medicine, we are moving forward. Nothing is the same as it was 10 or 15 years ago. There is also constant progress in lung transplantation. Short-term and long-term survival improves – says Dr. Hab. Jacek Wojarski from the Cardiac Surgery Clinic of the University Clinical Center in Gdańsk.

Doctors operate on increasingly complicated cases. Last year, in Zabrze, among others, they transplanted lungs to a patient with a rare disease: tracheobronchomegaly. Before the operation, Mr. Jacek Sadowski was so weak that he shaved for an hour. And now? – It’s 5 minutes and you’re done. There is improvement, the man says.

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In turn, Mrs. Karolina Jędrusiak had to have her heart and lungs transplanted at the same time. We were also there with a camera. – It all started with COVID-19. I got heart failure from Covid and pulmonary pressure from Covid – says a patient of doctors from Gdańsk.

– This is a really good year for transplantology, in the sense of: a good year for people on waiting lists who managed to have an organ transplanted – emphasizes Dr. Hab. Artur Kamiński, director of the Poltransplant Organization and Coordination Center for Transplantation.

Last year was good, and maybe this year will be even better. – We managed to do it once in Gdańsk, we had a year when all the transplants were successful and we would love to do it again, it would be really something – says Wojarski.