Some of the protagonists of the first liver transplant in Spain, which took place on February 23, 1984, will remember that milestone forty years later in a commemorative event held this Friday, February 23 at the Bellvitge University Hospital.
According to the press release issued by the hospital, among the professionals participating in the transplant who will participate in the event are the surgeon Alfonso Osorio, the anesthesiologist Marta Suárez and the scrub nurse Carmen Pascual.
The event will also feature the director of the Catalan Transplant Organization (OCATT), Jaume Tort, the head of liver transplantation at the National Transplant Organization (ONT), Gloria de la Rosa, the president of the Spanish Liver Transplant Society, Javier Briceño.
Professionals from the past and present of the Bellvitge University Hospital and representatives of the patients and relatives of the donors will also attend. Among them will be Montse Collado, who underwent surgery in Bellvitge in 1986, who is currently the person who has lived the longest with a transplanted liver in Spain.
During the event, the difficulties that had to be overcome to carry out the first intervention and launch a stable liver transplant program will be reviewed. Likewise, different professionals will remember how this procedure has evolved over the years from the points of view of surgery, hepatology, anesthesiology and nursing.
The first liver transplant in the Spanish State was performed at the Bellvitge Hospital on February 23, 1984 at a time when this intervention was only carried out by four groups worldwide. The two surgeons who led that initiative, carried out by a very large group of professionals, were Eduardo Jaurrieta (1948-2020) and Carles Margarit (1950-2005).
The project had the full support of the medical director and the heads of surgery and digestive system at that time at the Bellvitge Hospital, but it had to overcome many external reluctance and mistrust, and legal permissions did not arrive until the last moment.
The transplanted organ was removed at the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, and the subsequent implantation intervention in Bellvitge lasted for about twelve hours. The patient, Juan Cuesta, a SEAT mechanic diagnosed with a liver tumor with no other hope of cure, positively tolerated the new organ and returned to his normal life when he was discharged.
The broad echo of this medical success at a social level had a strong impact on the prestige of the hospital and the feeling of belonging and pride of all its professionals. Since that first intervention, the Bellvitge University Hospital has continued to be a benchmark in liver transplantation and the spearhead of its evolution in Catalonia and Spain.
Thus, in November 1988 he carried out the first simultaneous liver and kidney transplant in Spain. In February 1999, it was the first hospital in Spain to perform a domino transplant, a practice that allows the liver of a patient transplanted for hereditary familial amyloidosis to be used and implanted in a third person. In January 2002, it was also the first hospital in Spain to perform a liver transplant on a patient with HIV.
