News

Dear Colleagues

A new group for physicians trainees interested in solid organ transplantation (comparable to the Herrick Society) has been established with the support of The British Transplantation Society and the UKODTRN.

This group is for all trainees from all backgrounds across medical training. We aim to support education, training and research as well as represent physician trainee views around issues pertinent to solid organ transplantation.

If you are interested in being kept informed as the society develops (not formal membership at this stage) please complete the link which follows by 18th September 2023 (and vote on what we should name the society!).

Specific queries can be directed to kaitlin.mayne@nhs.scot and the link to complete is here: https://forms.gle/DGjsuQiXPg9Y9uaD6 .

Please share with your colleagues.

Best wishes
Karen Rockwell, Co-Director UK Organ Donation and Transplantation (UKODTRN) 
Kaitlin Mayne, BTPTS Chair

(Updated 11/09/23 deadline extended)

Professor Thomas E Starzl, who passed away last weekend a few days short of his 91st birthday, is universally regarded as the father of liver transplantation and intestinal transplantation. His career defining work as young liver transplant surgeon in Denver, Colorado comprised exhaustive laboratory and human clinical endeavours to overcome the technical, physiological, preservation and immunological barriers that had daunted liver transplantation during an era of hopelessness for the entire field. He moved from Denver to Pittsburgh, setting up what was to develop into the largest liver and intestinal transplant programme in the world in the early 1990s. He converted what was considered an experimental procedure into a standard low risk operation that is currently performed around 25,000 times a year worldwide.

The first and second generation liver transplant surgeons around the world have almost all learnt their skills working with Professor Starzl. His protégés went on to lead a multitude of the worlds’ liver transplant programmes. The other area where Professor Starzl played a pioneering role was in the complex field of intestinal and multivisceral transplantation, where he introduced the use of Tacrolimus and Campath, to overcome the major barriers of rejection and infection.
Professor Starzl remains the most published, most read and most cited transplant researcher in the history of this challenging field, with almost 2500 peer reviewed publications. He held innumerable honours and given hundreds of distinguished orations/lectures worldwide. Of the five books he wrote, The Puzzle People published in 1996, narrates stories on the incredible and brave lives of transplant patients, and their impact on the doctors looking after them.

His work in the areas of organ preservation, host graft interactions, microchimerism, immunosuppression and tolerance were truly groundbreaking, much of which has contributed to the safe and routine practice of organ transplantation, and his work remains one of the main reasons why transplantation became one of the most successful health care development stories of the 20th Century.

Despite these incredible achievements, Professor Starzl remained a humble, resolute, much respected and tireless researcher well into his 90s. His only concern remained the wellbeing of his patients and his entire life was devoted to findings ways to overcome the challenges in delivering these complex treatments for their benefit.

An example of his ongoing contribution was the transmitted lecture on the challenges facing intestinal transplantation at the 14th World Small Bowel Transplant symposium in Buenos Aires, Argentina in June 2015. He trained several generations of surgeons, physicians, researchers and ethicists. Even for clinicians who never met or trained with him, he remained a source of guiding inspiration, and countless transplant surgeons around the world have been directly influenced by his achievements, for which they will always be grateful.

To follow is a copy of a report from Pittsburgh that shows how amazing Professor Starzl was with an incredible output for a very long duration of time;  Download Starzl_Thomas_PS_00_2016-02-04_1437_24449.pdf