The Children's Health Center has been performing liver transplants for 25 years. Their activities are a global achievement

Mrs. Daria Duch shared her liver with her son. There would be nothing special about it if it weren't for the fact that this is the 500th family liver transplant at the Children's Health Center. The family comes from Ukraine and in his country the boy would not have a chance to be saved. Bogdan would simply die. – On Monday he went to the hospital and on Tuesday there was surgery – says Bogdan's mother.

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For 25 years, it has been organized in such a way that doctors take a piece of the parent's liver at the clinical hospital at Banacha Street in Warsaw and take it to the Children's Health Center, where it is transplanted to the child. The first such procedure took place in 1999. The TVN “Fakty” team then accompanied the doctors and Ola, who is still alive and well today.

– There are no surgical complications so far and I hope there won't be any. The child does not bleed, does not lose blood, all vessels supplying and draining blood from the liver are patent and the blood flows – said in 1999 Professor Piotr Kaliciński from the Department of Pediatric Surgery and Organ Transplantation at the “Pomnik-Centrum Zdrowia Dziecka” Institute.

Professor Piotr Kaliciński has been coordinating family transplants for a quarter of a century. In the intensive care unit, the children after the transplant were cared for by Dr. Marek Migdał – currently the director of the Children's Health Center. – In the field of liver and kidney transplantation in children, we are currently one of the two largest centers in the world – he emphasizes.

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Nearly 90 percent of children remain alive five years after transplantation. These are all extremely serious cases, caused mainly by congenital defects, but also by poisoning after eating mushrooms. No drugs would be able to help these patients' livers. – On October 1, 1999, we decided that we were ready. We performed the first transplants in cooperation with colleagues from Paris, and later we performed them ourselves – adds Marek Szymczak, Ph.D., from the Department of Pediatric Surgery and Organ Transplantation at the “Pomnik-Centrum Zdrowia Dziecka” Institute.

This is how 25 years passed. Now the Center is training doctors from Ukraine so that families like Bogdana's can find help in their homeland after the end of the war. – We have been able to help our colleagues from Ukraine for over a year, we have a formal agreement approved by the governments of both countries – explains Dr. Migdał.