The “Saint Mary” Clinic Hospital in Bucharest became known worldwide when it announced the completion of the first lung transplant in the country. The intervention took place in April 2018, when a team of doctors, coordinated by Dr. Igor Tudorache, gave back chance to live to a man.
You may be wondering why we are talking in a promotion program for Bucharest on such a theme. The answer is as simple as possible: The capital of Romania is not just a city where you can have fun, develop business or make a career, it is also a city where medical services are expanding, the hospitals here manage to impose due to the services offered.
And in this picture, the “Saint Mary” Clinical Hospital in Bucharest stands out because it includes the only Lung Transplant Center in the country. The compartment is part of the General Surgery II section and was established in 2017, being accredited by the National Transplant Agency and the Ministry of Health.
The “Saint Mary” Clinical Hospital in Bucharest is part of the network of medical units administered by the Capital City Hall, through the Administration of Hospitals and Medical Services Bucharest (ASSMB).
History of the hospital
Located on Ion Mihalache Boulevard, from District 1, the “Saint Mary” Clinical Hospital in Bucharest has a history that goes far back, up to the interwar period.
At that time, a polyclinic of the Railways appeared on the structure of which today’s healthcare unit will be developed. The transformation of this polyclinic into a hospital took place after 1944, the new sanitary unit being “baptized” “Vasile Roaita” Hospital. Later, it was given the name of “Grivița Roșie” Hospital, and throughout the communist period it was known as Grivița Hospital.
The current name of the hospital was given in 1990, and the initiative belonged to prof. dr. Ioan Guțiu. Today, the health unit has 303 beds and has no less than 13 sections and compartments focused on different diseases, from internal medicine, to surgery, rheumatology, ENT or pneumology.
Performance in the field of organ transplantation
A hospital with 303 beds is usually in the category of small sanitary units. Therefore, the fact that such a hospital is involved in the transplant activity is an extraordinary performance.
The “Saint Mary” Clinical Hospital has a Transplant Center in which both liver and lung transplantation are performed.
If in the case of liver transplant we are talking about an ordinary surgery, with many successes in Romanian medicine, lung transplant is a delicate surgery that is carried out with great risks in all the major university centers in the world. Of all the types of transplantation, the lung is the most difficult to perform.
The Liver Transplant Center of the “St. Mary” Clinical Hospital was established in 2014. In the case of the Lung Transplant Center, the accreditations were obtained in 2017, but the first intervention was performed in April 2018.
Funding for the development of the Lung Transplant Center which Romania is in great need has so far amounted to over ten million Euros. The money came both from the local budget, through the Capital City Hall, and from the central budget, through the Ministry of Health.
After the “Saint Mary” Clinical Hospital received all the accreditations for lung transplantation, a few months passed until the first intervention was performed.
The beneficiary of this first transplant, performed on the night of 17 to 18 November 2018, was a man from Iasi, who for three years lived connected to the oxygen apparatus. At the time of the surgery he was 37 years old. Today, more than a year after the complicated transplant, the man leads his life quietly. It is true that he is under continuous medical supervision, but the recovery is good and proves that the intervention was a successful one.
After this successfully operated case, other patients who received new life chances followed.
Moreover, the most recent achievement of the “Saint Mary” Clinical Hospital marks a new national premiere. It is about performing two simultaneous transplants: liver and lungs, in two different patients. The representatives of the medical unit announced that it is for the first time in the world when a small hospital, under 300 beds, achieves such a performance.
