Abdominal transplant surgery and coordination

Mid-January 2022, the 5,000th kidney transplant took place at UZ Leuven. Prof. dr. Dirk Kuypers, head of the nephrology department, looks back on a couple of historic innovations that resulted in the excellence of the Leuven kidney transplant care programme.

A COVID-19 patient on the intensive care ward with irreparably damaged lungs was given new lungs on 1 Januari 2021 in the UZ Leuven transplant centre. It is the first time in the Benelux that someone on an intensive care COVID-19 ward gets a lung transplant.

On Sunday 1 September 4 complex transplants were performed virtually simultaneously in the UZ Leuven operating wing. An amazing feat, because it was the first time in Belgium that all main transplantable organs of the body were transferred from donor to recipient on the same day.