More than seven years after plans were announced by the Government to provide facilities at Dublin's Mater hospital to enable it carry out lung transplants, the first lung transplant operation in the history of the State took place at the hospital yesterday.
While it was never expected, following the announcement of funding for the programme by the then health minister, Brian Cowen, in January 1998, that it would take so long for the first transplant to take place, the development has nonetheless been welcomed as a significant milestone both for the hospital and in Irish medicine.
Up to now Irish patients in need of lung transplants have had to travel to the UK for their operations. While many will continue to have to travel to the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle for lung transplants until the capacity of the Mater unit is extended, the successful completion of the first lung transplant operation in the Republic is viewed as a significant achievement.
The Mater unit is concentrating on doing single-lung transplants first but hopes to progress to double lung transplants.
Some €10.4 million has been spent on the unit to date, which also carries out heart transplants. Most of the money, an estimated €6.5 million, has been spent on staffing and funding the unit's day-to-day operations. A further €8.7 million is due to be spent on the third phase of the unit's development, which will see the construction of additional theatre space.
The unit has 80 staff and while questions were raised earlier this year about what they were doing, given that no lung transplants had been carried out at the unit more than a year after it was officially opened by the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, the hospital stressed the unit was busy looking after patients before and after lung transplants in the UK, as well as heart transplant patients.
A spokesman said the unit wasn't staffed and ready to do lung transplants until last October and then it had to wait for suitable organs to become available to be transplanted.
Since October the unit has undertaken several "harvesting runs" for potentially suitable organs. However none were successful, either because the organs were unsuitable or consent for their donation was withdrawn at the last minute.
The need for the unit is evident from the fact that there are 11 patients on the Mater's lung-transplant waiting list and another 18 Irish patients, many of them cystic fibrosis sufferers who need double-lung transplants, on the waiting list for transplants in Newcastle. At present the Mater unit has capacity to do only about five lung transplants a year.
The Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland, which mounted a nationwide campaign for a lung-transplant unit in the State in the 1990s, said it welcomed news of the first transplant in the Republic but was concerned that the Mater unit had limited capacity. Chief executive Godfrey Fletcher said this was a concern because it was important there was free access to transplants given that they effectively gave the gift of life.
Terry Mangan, chairman of the Irish Heart and Lung Transplant Association, said news of the first lung transplant in the State was "absolutely wonderful" for the entire transplant community.
He said the State already had facilities to carry out liver, kidney, cornea and heart transplants, and lung transplants had been the missing piece of the jigsaw.