High-tech organ transplantation centre to be built in Kazan

A high-tech medical building with a transplantation unit will be built in Kazan. Minister of Health Care of the republic Marat Sadykov said this at a special briefing on modernisation of primary health care in the republic and stressed that this decision on the construction was made by the Tatarstan president.

He noted that transplantology successfully developed in Tatarstan.

“In 2017-2018, we performed one liver transplantation. We did 28 in 2021, this year we plan 30. There is an agreement with the main institution of Russia’s Ministry of Health Care to create a transplantation centre here for the whole Volga Federal District.”

Also, Sadykov said that other services will be created at the high-tech centre: an injury centre that will comply with the latest requirements and all high-tech medical advice.

It is yet unknown what costs this project will require. The republican health care minister says the sum is calculated by the Tatarstan Ministry of Construction.

Head of Surgery Unit No. 2 of Republican Clinical Hospital, transplantologist Alexander Kirshin said that in transplantology the number of surgeries, which means saved lives, depends not only on the availability of specialists, equipment and patients who need organ transplantation. If there is not a donor’s organ, there is no surgery. This is the difference from, let’s say, joint or heart valve prosthesis when a replacement for the organ is made in the factory.

“Despite the high demand, there aren’t a lot of liver transplantations, because of a deficit of organs,” says Kirshin. “We try to do 50 surgeries of this kind a year. But even if they are done every week, it is impossible to deal with liver transplantation only, something else needs to be done. Moreover, I am an oncologist who operates everything, from the neck to pelvic organs, I have a big experience, I worked in several units in my homeland. We deal with liver tumours, a full cycle of such surgeries is done in the unit, from biopsy to resection. If there are focal liver lesions, these lesions can be removed because a healthy liver regenerates up to 80% of the removed organ. If there is a diffuse liver lesion, it is removed completely, and then transplantation saves a person.”