Main content
Sorry, this episode is not currently available

Episode 3

Episode 3 of 6

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?

59 minutes

Last on

Wed 25 Nov 2020 23:30

Credits

Role Contributor
Executive Producer Jackie Waldock
Executive Producer Simon Dickson
Executive Producer Lorraine Charker-Phillips
Series Producer Emma Whitehead
Series Editor Mark Rossiter

Broadcasts

Watch Open University interviews with frontline NHS staff

Interviews with staff at the Royal Free hospital.