Kidney transplant

A successful kidney transplant is, without doubt, one of the best treatment that medical science has come up with so far. Its introduction to the UK was largely due to the pioneering work of Sir Michael Woodruff, a general surgeon who worked at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh.

In 1960, Sir Michael carried out the first successful transplant of a kidney using the patient’s identical twin brother as a living donor. Over the next three years, he transplanted many other kidneys but with varied success because immunosuppressive drugs had yet to be discovered. It wasn’t long though before these too became available following some pioneering research by another British surgeon, Sir Roy Calne during the early 1960s.

Nowadays kidney transplants are commonplace; last year, approx 1,500-2000 kidneys were successfully transplanted in the UK alone.