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Abstract
Kidney transplantation remains the treatment of choice for end-stage renal failure. The Sydney Hospital and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital transplant programme were an integral part of national and international transplant developments. Improvements in immunosupression, antivirals and other drugs have dramatically improved graft survival rates so that early graft loss is now a rare event. These improvements are the consequence of the sacrifices and commitment of patients, donor families and staff in the early days of transplantation.
Key Words
kidney, renal, transplant, Sydney Hospital
Based on a presentation at Royal North Shore Hospital on the occasion of renal donors being recognised (2006).
Recollection:
In 1967 I completed my membership of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, deciding upon a speciahst career in Renal Medicine. I was then at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney. Fortuitously the Sydney University Renal Transplant Group decided to embark on a community based cadaveric renal transplant program for NSW (Sheil, Stewart, Johnson et al. 1969). Renal transplants had been performed in NSW at Prince Henry Hospital at least two years earlier and other NSW patients with living donors had also been referred to Adelaide where an Australian surgeon Peter Knight was performing living renal donor transplants. The Sydney University group was headed by Dr John Stewart from Sydney Hospital, Dr John Sands and Professor Ross Sheil from Royal Prince Alfred Hospital with transplant operations taking place at both hospitals from potential donors referred from all major NSW hospitals. Professor Sheil is a Queensland graduate who had trained in Boston after a sojourn in England. His appointment to Sydney Hospital in March 1967 provided political clout within the Sydney University group as well as surgical and clinical expertise. Dr John Stewart is a New Zealand graduate who had trained at Hammersmith Post-graduate Hospital in London as well as other UK centres before his appointment to Sydney Hospital in the mid-sixties. He had a particular interest in the bleeding disorders of uraemia. Collaboration between teaching hospitals in Sydney in those days was a rare event so this was a new and exciting venture for all involved. The Sydney University Group needed the co-operation of other interested parties to find and provide the cadaveric donors across NSW to make it viable. Accordingly...