This episode explores the impact of Covid-19 on the Royal Free Hospital's transplant services, which treat some of the hospital's most vulnerable patients.
This episode explores the impact of Covid-19 on the Royal Free Hospital鈥檚 transplant services, which treat some of the hospital鈥檚 most vulnerable patients. A specialist centre for both kidney and liver, it normally performs around 140 transplants a year in each discipline. But from March, with increasing numbers of Covid-19 patients coming to the hospital, these transformative and life-saving operations were largely unable to continue.
Patients with kidney disease who are on dialysis and waiting for a transplant are extremely vulnerable to Covid-19 - a quarter of the hospital鈥檚 dialysis patients who caught the virus during the first wave of the pandemic died.
Four months later, as infection numbers have dropped, and alongside the implementation of new infection-control protocols, the service is finally able to start again. The department, desperate to maximize on this window, have performed three months' worth of transplants in five weeks. But as the hospital begins to see numbers rise once again, how long can they continue to offer these life-changing operations?
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Credits
| Role | Contributor |
|---|---|
| Executive Producer | Jackie Waldock |
| Executive Producer | Simon Dickson |
| Executive Producer | Lorraine Charker-Phillips |
| Series Producer | Emma Whitehead |
| Series Editor | Mark Rossiter |
Watch Open University interviews with frontline NHS staff
Interviews with staff at the Royal Free hospital.