One hundred heart and lung transplants were performed in 2023 by the team at the Silesian Centre for Heart Diseases in Zabrze, a teaching hospital of the Silesian Medical University. This is the best result among centres transplanting thoracic organs in Poland. Once again, Zabrze also performed the highest number of transplants in children, with a total of 11 heart and lung transplants in patients under the age of 18.
Zabrze transplantologists performed 53 heart transplants and 47 lung transplants in 2023. This is a comparable result to the 2022 figures.
- It was a good year for our patients. The Silesian Centre for Heart Diseases in Zabrze is working at full steam after the commissioning of the new pavilion. We perform around a hundred thoracic organ transplants a year with very good results. We are also one of the few centres in Europe to successfully implement a programme of heart transplants and mechanical circulatory support in children. This is a huge team effort of many people," says Professor Piotr Przybyłowski, MD, Chief Executive Officer of the Silesian Centre for Heart Diseases in Zabrze.
In 2023, in the Zabrze centre, organs taken from outside Poland were implanted in patients for the first time in Poland. Thanks to the international cooperation of transplant coordinators, it was possible to retrieve two hearts for transplantation in Czech hospitals. According to the procedure, an international procurement can take place when there is no suitable recipient on the waiting list for a transplant in a given country. In this case, information about the possibility of obtaining organs is sent to a special FOEDUS platform, which brings together units coordinating transplantation programmes in EU countries.
In March, a team from the Silesian Centre for Heart Diseases in Zabrze performed the world's second lung transplant in a patient with a rare genetic disease that causes permanent damage to the lungs and bronchi. In December, a lung transplant was performed on a patient who had been waiting 70 days for a life-saving procedure connected to ECMO, a device that replaces the heart and lungs in states of extreme cardiopulmonary failure.
- When talking about the successes of cardiac surgeons, we must also remember the daily work of our cardiologists and the entire team at the Silesian Centre for Heart Diseases. These include thousands of hospitalisations for children and adults every year and more than 70,000 outpatient consultations," adds Prof. Przybyłowski.
The Silesian Centre for Heart Diseases in Zabrze is a leading clinical, scientific and training centre in Poland, offering full diagnostics and modern therapy for cardiovascular diseases in adults and children. Since October 2021, the centre has been a teaching hospital of the Silesian Medical University in Katowice.
