Health within a universal and universal system is due to the effective and safe care of the sick, who would not understand the current model of social care without rational and equal care for their demands. Much management and investment efforts focus on this priority. But we also cannot forget about another equally important and irreversible purpose when it comes to identifying and qualifying benefits for users: scientific separation, constant updating of treatments and constant updating of technological equipment and specialists. This is the less well-known aspect, but it is the aspect behind the medical guidelines, clinical practice, laboratory conclusions, and above all in the amazing race for transplants, with the Canary Islands leading the way.
41 years ago, the University of Canary Hospital (HUC) revitalized the kidney transplant protocol, a first in the history of island health. An intervention that gradually sped up the program to now reach seven hospitals.
Proof of the level reached is the announcement that Negrin is ready for the first lung transplant of 2023, a goal that, if science allows, will be a blow to a successful path in transplanting the kidneys, pancreas, liver and heart. On the other hand, interventions should not obscure other non-secondary tissue grafts, such as corneas or parts of arteries.
The expansion of the network of hospitals of the archipelago for the policy of agriculture clearly expresses the preparation of specialists trained for this purpose in the best reference centers in Barcelona and Madrid. But also, as happens in the implementation of the lung transplant program, a millionaire investment in technology, through the regional government and next generation funds.
In the context of the European Union, Spain has one of the most advanced legislation to protect organ donors and their recipients. Legal guarantee Stimulated by one of the highest rates of donations on the basis of altruism, fairness, gratuities and equality, criteria without which scientific research, organ access (live or cadavers), intervention and follow-up – arrives actors’ time for surgery to correct mistakes and use preventive treatments.
People’s solidarity is at the high end of the complex medical health architecture, since without organ donation the model would collapse. Without them, we would not be able to talk about the goals that were achieved, the level of survival that the cultivation recipients had, or the degree of satisfaction with their well-being.
It is not possible to leave another solidarity that is no less valuable than the caravan. Through their taxes, every citizen pays for advancement in surgery and medicine. General representatives usually focus on waiting lists, which are of course a matter of transcendence to users, or more or less speed of appointments at health centers or collapsing interest in a hospital emergency service.
The media power of these objections and the related allure they elicit in a parliamentary confrontation, unfortunately, means that issues such as the number of transplants or their rating are secondary, if not high. Politicians and society must realize that science is necessary to save lives, a goal that has never been so straightforward as in the coronavirus pandemic, where scientists have achieved heroic status, without undermining the earnest dedication of doctors and nurses.
The news that a lung transplant was performed at Negrin Hospital clearly shows that the public health system in the Canary Islands is not resting on its laurels. His journey through the chapter on applications, perhaps the most sensitive, underscores the power of the model. It is clearly a satisfactory development, a career thought to increase life expectancy, as well as our encouragement not to be complacent in the face of chronic rejection, the most important challenge of the transplant patient.
The future begins giving its first glimpses with organ transplants, inter-species transplants, a line of research trying to close the circle with the pig. The latest and most striking case was the transfer of a genetically modified pig heart to a 57-year-old man, who died two months after surgery at the Medical Center of the University of Maryland School of Medicine (USA). to reject the user.
Animal Resource opens up an important ethical debate yet to come, from animal protection to the use of species with altered genetics, to the marketing of animal organs that turns upside down the principles of solidarity that govern donation, and transplantation today. Still in the experimental stage and with serious immune issues still to be resolved, an external organ transplant could be a solution for people waiting for a transplant. Demand over donors.
This horizon of change, which has nothing to do with medical research, and which is always subject to turmoil, illustrates the need for the science section not to recede in public budgets. Investing in it will enable better medical care and increase the well-being of patients. With the expansion of transplants in the archipelago, a significant health milestone has been achieved: that many patients and relatives are not affected by forcible transfer to hospital centers on the peninsula, a disorder associated with pain due to illness.
