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In this article, the two transplant specialists Prof. Dr. med. Martin Zeier - Medical Director of the Kidney Center at the UKL-HD - and Prof. Dr. med. Christoph Michalski - Medical Director of the Clinic for General, Visceral and Transplant Surgery - talk about the Transplant Center at the hospital and how they will jointly advance the major topic of "transplantation" as a focus at Heidelberg University Hospital.
Although thoracic organs play an important role at the Transplant Center, the neurologist and the visceral surgeon limit their discussion to abdominal organs, i.e. liver, kidney and the combination of liver and pancreas transplantation. Here, on the surgical-technical side, there are some innovations through the so-called "robotics" and minimally invasive surgery, which is of great advantage especially in the case of live kidney donation removals (explantation) by reducing the invasiveness of the procedure. Another point is the continuous optimization of the use of machine perfusion, in which the donor organs, instead of being stored and transported on ice as was previously the case, are connected to a hypothermic (cold) or normothermic (37 degrees) perfusion pump, in the latter case remaining metabolically active. Studies have shown that this improves transplant outcomes. This is a circumstance that should be investigated in further clinical studies due to logistical reasons and also because of the lack of donor organs available. Innovation impulses are to be expected not only on the technical and epistemological side, but also in team play.
As with a soccer team, the transplant team has been reorganized and the experts already present on site have been joined by additional transplant specialists recruited from other locations. The magic formula lies in the mixture of the tried and tested and the newly added. This is also to be continued on an interdisciplinary basis by firmly integrating relevant specialties into the processes of a treatment. A prominent example is oncology, since cancer patients, who are often still very young, would benefit from a transplant after removal of cancerous organs. The team will increasingly include artificial intelligence modules such as image recognition and machine learning in the future. Although this currently plays more of a role in surgical education and training, the powerful computing power of computers means that it is on its way to a goal that we cannot even fully imagine today.
Hear what these transplamtation physicians have to say in our "Let's Talk" video podcast