Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - In 12 years 130 children of different ages with serious kidney trouble have resumed normal life thanks to transplants performed by doctors at Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome. Since this special treatment started in 1993, 130 operations including combined kidney and heart surgery with 100% survival of the patients have been performed
The survival of transplanted organs is 90.7 % for 12 months, 87.7 % for 5 years, 82.9% for 10 years. Still difficult however the situation for children with particular clinical conditions especially hyper-immune patients, fortunately few, for which it takes longer to find suitable organs. In this ambit it is not enough to obtain a good survival rate for the transplanted organs, it is necessary to reach satisfactory clinical conditions which include among children normal growth in height which only a few years ago was rare among children who have undergone a kidney transplant. Besides strictly medical efforts to obtain the above listed results the Hospital’s Nephrology Centre strives to guarantee the best possible reinsertion in school and other social activities.
In this field the Nephrology Centre is working in collaboration with the Hospital’s Epidemology department to make a survey on the level of social reinsertion of chidlren with a kidney transplant. (AP) (23/7/2005 Agenzia Fides; Righe:23; Parole:278)
