May 27, 2023 - In the first six months of this year, a total of 54 solid organs were transplanted at KBC Zagreb, including 20 kidneys, 17 livers, 15 hearts and two lung transplants, it was pointed out today at a press conference on the National Day of Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplants. Their patients included two children, said the head of the Urology Clinic of KBC Zagreb, Željko Kaštelan.

He pointed out that they are particularly proud of the success of the transplant teams that were present at the beginning of the year during a lung transplant in a child, as well as a simultaneous heart and liver transplant, writes Index.

"With ten transplants per million inhabitants, Croatia is the leader in Europe"

Assistant director of KBC Zagreb Milivoj Novak said that the number of transplants in KBC Zagreb is moving forward. Four years ago, in 2019, 99 transplants were performed, in 2021 there were 88, and last year 106.

The head of the Clinic for Diseases of the Heart and Blood Vessels, Davor Miličić, reminded that this year is the 35^th anniversary since the first heart transplant in Croatia, and since then the program has been running continuously. This year, 15 heart transplants were performed, and a kind of record, he says, was December last year and January this year with 12 heart transplants.

"Croatia, with ten transplants per million inhabitants, is the first in Europe," Miličić emphasized, comparing it to Great Britain, where there are 2.4 transplants per million inhabitants, and Spain and France with five to six per million inhabitants.

About a hundred people were involved in heart and liver transplantation at the same time

At the conference, it was pointed out that simultaneous liver and heart surgery on the same patient is a rare undertaking on a global scale, which was very demanding because immediately after the heart transplant, the liver transplant was performed. This can lead to problems even with a healthy heart, and the risk is even greater with a newly implanted heart, but it all went well without major complications.

Head of the Department for Coordination of Transplantation and Explantation, Jasna Brezak, said that the operation was organizationally demanding because the organs were obtained from two different donors from Eurotransplant.

"Everything had to be coordinated, and about a hundred people were involved in the entire process," she stated. Brezak emphasized that the transplantation system is well organized, it is a system of high knowledge and empathy, enthusiasm of all who participate in it.

"The fact that Croatia is at the top in the world in the donor and transplantation program shows that our medicine is completely at an enviable level," concluded the Head of the Department for Coordination of Transplantation and Explantation.

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ZAGREB, 14 March 2021 - On the occasion of World Kidney Day, observed on 11 March, a medical team from the KBC Zagreb hospital presented the immunoadsorption method allowing organ transplantation in patients in whom such a procedure would not be possible during the COVID-19 pandemic.

KBC Zagreb is the first hospital in Croatia to apply the immunoadsorption method to remove specific pathological antibodies in the process of transplantation while preserving the protective bodies in the patient's blood to protect them against infections. In that way, the patient is not exposed to the additional risk of infectious complications, the head of the hospital's Kidney Transplantation Department, Nikolina Bašić Jukić, told a press conference.

This method has enabled us to perform transplantation in two highly-sensitive patients and to save the life of a 30-year-old woman after lung transplantation because of chronic antibody-mediated rejection, she added.

The director of KBC Zagreb, Ante Ćorušić, said that immunoadsorption enables a better medical outcome in transplant patients at the time of the coronavirus pandemic. "This method is slightly more expensive but is much more effective. This is a great success not just for the Department of Nephrology but for the entire transplantation team, including urologists and cardiologists."

At this largest centre for kidney transplantation in Croatia, 43 patients received new kidneys last year. Ten such procedures have been performed this year, and only five patients remain on the waiting list.

The transplantation program was interrupted twice last year due to an escalation of the coronavirus pandemic, as a result of which fewer than average procedures were performed. The annual average ranges between 70 and 80 procedures, the head of the Department of Urology, Željko Kaštelan, said.

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