Hospital Series 6

Episode
Episode 3
Broadcast Info
2020 (59 mins)
Description
Award-winning Hospital has now returned for a sixth series to the Royal Free London, a world-leader in the treatment of infectious diseases and one of the biggest NHS Trusts in the country. This episode explores the impact of Covid on the Royal Free Hospital’s transplant services, which
treat some of the Hospital’s 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 patients coming in 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; a quarter of the hospital’s 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? 68-year-old Khalid has been on the waiting list for a kidney transplant for three years, enduring nine hours of dialysis at home every night. He finally receives an offer at 3am and arrives at the Royal Free Hospital for a battery of tests, including a Covid screen. The transplant proceeds but there are complications; his new kidney isn’t functioning - there is a risk his body is rejecting the kidney which could mean he will have to go back on the waiting list for another transplant; and in the meantime shield at home with Covid numbers rising once again. The transplant team has taken over the Trust’s private facility on the top floor of the hospital so that it can provide a Covid-safe environment in single rooms. But with the private practice closed since March - first to treat Covid and now transplant patients - the Trust is losing millions of pounds. It normally generates around £23million a year, which is ploughed back into the Royal Free London’s NHS work. With private patients calling daily to try to book procedures, saving kidney patients lives is costing the Trust dearly financially. Kathleen, who was scheduled to have a live donor kidney transplant back in April, which was cancelled due to the pandemic, is finally back in. Her nephew Joe is donating a kidney in what will be the first live transplant to happen at the Royal Free Hospital since the start of the pandemic. Joe is not a compatible donor for Kathleen so they entered into a national scheme to match with another donor recipient pairing in the same situation. This scheme is incredibly successful in the UK and those that joined have a 43% chance of finding a pairing. The operations will be synchronized, with both retrievals happening at the same time, before they travel to their respective recipients. But when the donor kidney arrives, its anatomy looks alarming, and there’s a real chance the operation will fail. The Royal Free Hospital is also one of Europe’s leading liver transplant centres. During the pandemic, a reduced number of liver transplants had to continue for the most critically ill patients, as without this, liver failure is fatal. 38-year-old Greek national Triantafyllos has end stage liver failure and without a transplant he has been given just weeks to live. He has been flown over from Greece on a European Healthcare Reciprocal agreement to receive a liver transplant on the NHS - paid for by the Greek Government. While at the Royal Free Hospital, he has already had one transplant offer fall through. Triantafyllos must now wait again to see if the surgeons deem the liver viable; a nerve-wracking process as 40% of offers accepted don’t proceed to transplant. European patients such as Triantafyllos are another valuable source of income for the Trust as they are able to expand the size of their services and therefore income. But with a potential ‘no deal’Brexit fast approaching, this agreement may end.
Genre
Medicine; Business Studies; Science; Biology; Health and Social Care

How to cite this record

The Open University, "Hospital Series 6". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/237842 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)