Towards a better life: A gift of life (1978)

thank you three years ago both these outwardly healthy young men were suffering from debilitating illnesses normal life was impossible both had to spend three days a week linked to machines just to stay alive now John Murray trains by running 40 kilometers a day he won't break any world records but he's good enough to have won some prizes Richard Ayers is an enthusiastic Runner and spends much of his time working as a swimming coach both these men have received kidney transplants that is their unfailed kidneys have been replaced by a kidney taken from a patient who has died from other causes yet John and Richard are only two among many thousands of people benefit from transplant surgery every year many of these patients meet for their own special Olympic Games a public demonstration of their healthy lives today in Britain there is a well-developed communication system to coordinate the supply of kidneys corneas and to some extent livers and pancreases and of course Hearts the transplantation of which tend to grab the headlines but the vast majority of transplant surgery is now regarded as routine at the New Year's party in the London Hospital a doctor catches up with many patients he has seen over the years in Britain about a thousand patients a year receive kidney transplants and the success rate is about 70 percent yet there are nearly three thousand patients waiting for transplants while they wait they must be supported by means of a technique called dialysis yes so that's nearly 12 years 12 years of extra life despite the waiting list the message of Dr Parsons to his patients and his medical staff at the beginning of a new year was one of optimism this is a gift relationship which we're celebrating tonight people have given things freely no one's paid for anything which is absolutely super and as it should be thank you all very much foreign no one can say how long a kidney patient will have to wait for it could be a year or two or just a month until then they must live by means of dialysis when the kidneys fail poisons build up in the bloodstream and must be removed this is done by the technique of dialysis the patient is connected to the dialysis machine through which his blood circulates over a period of four hours the poisons will be removed the process must be repeated three times a week the child's education can suffer and for the families it can be appallingly disruptive take him up three days three days a week and he would be on the machine for four hours a day Michael Phillips is one of the luckier ones he has been on dialysis for only six months but life could go on like this for many years we don't know what a home is anymore and nothing gets done at home you get out the hospital you try and control your child to a certain extent because of the fact that he's usually running around during the day a transplant in Michael's case is the best solution his name is on the transplant list and his family must wait in his spare time Stephen cope plays lead guitar with a band called I want this is one of their infrequent rehearsal sessions Stephen cope can also be helped by transplant surgery he has lost almost all Vision in his left eye Stephen is a postgraduate student at the London School of economics most of his time is spent either in the classroom or in the library and his loss of vision is impairing his ability to read both Blackboard and book from my left eye it's just all the haze Big Fuzz I can't see anyone's face I've just said the outline Maybe and I could see nothing at the distance I have to read quite close and the my right eye is taking all the strain and I think that's gradually getting worse actually it's a condition that just uh rapidly came on about um three to four years ago and it rather than the normal sort of lens shape cornea it's sort of got a big bump in his vision has now become so impaired that he has had to give up driving he can no longer judge speed and distance yeah Stephen had been promised an operation early in the new year Stephen cope was also waiting UK transplant the supply of organs for transplant surgery takes place on a minute to minute basis uh the name of the donor whenever a hospital suspects that it might have organs available for transplantation they inform the British transplant service and the tissue type please the details taken down include a great deal of information on what is called tissue typing the tissue type of a kidney must match that of the patient who will receive it if the operation is to succeed the inflammation is tapped into the computer which finds those patients with the closest matching tissue type if the match is not good then the operation will fail the patient will simply reject the transplant kidney in the next few hours a difficult decision must be made about the potential donor and this is the central debate in transplant surgery well this young man suffered road traffic accident four days ago a patient suffering from a brain hemorrhage or perhaps a serious red accident maybe apparently alive on a breathing machine yet the brain may be quite dead right so has he had any sedatives no not none at all since admission to establish brain death a large number of tests and examinations must be carried out and they must be carried out by two doctors last time we checked which was two hours ago they were normal and could you detect any eye movements with a caloric test no we performed that this morning and there was no reaction the breathing machine will be turned off for a few seconds to see if there's any spontaneous response breathe when you turn the ventilator off when all these tests have been independently carried out by the two doctors and when both agree that all the criteria have been fulfilled the patient is considered to be brain dead the breathing machine is turned off and then the organs can be removed time is now the essence kidneys for example must be transplanted within 12 to 18 hours they are moved with the greatest Care by security company fastened by a safety belt the race is now on to try to give life perhaps this is the Paradox of transplant surgery for one branch of medicine to succeed another must have failed a young man like Richard Ayers can keep up his running and swimming because another patient died this raises issues not just for the medical profession but for all of us issues which are being discussed extensively in the media last year a thousand transplants were done in the UK the waiting list had risen to 2700 in Saint Mary's Hospital Portsmouth the Wessex Regional transplant unit has increased its transplantation rate by 36 percent now there may be many questions in your mind about transplants and if you want Richard Ayers was taking part along with medical staff in a radio program in which the public were invited to telephone in their own points of view yeah on Friday evening well um Julian Bicknell and and Richard Ayers have just rushed into the studio um Julia looks a lot less uh healthy than Richard actually Richard uh do you often since since having been a transplant recipient do you often get people uh asking you to prove just how fit you are now um well unfortunately not because most of the friends of mine don't realize I've um actually been ill on this sort of thing um so I just act normally and live a completely normal life so they don't notice at all there were of course those who phoned in to tell of their success stories in that case I'd ask if he's to hang onto the telephone I'll let you listen to the program down the phone and then I'll put you through to Gordon Cooper as soon as I can right okay let's uh go to our first call now we ask people to ring in with their with their questions with their queries with their worries about uh uh kidney transplants our first call is Neil wigs from Portsmouth Neil perhaps I could ask our people on the table to put their headphones on so they'll be able to hear what Neil's got to say Neil what do you want to say on this subject hello um I'm the recipient of that successful transplant and I'd like to tell people Neil Wiggs and his family have made medical history was on dialysis and for about 12 15 months and I had a first transplant which didn't take very well um it lasted about a month if it failed so um I had to go back on the machine rather than Dialysis in hospital Neil dialyzed at home many patients in Britain take this option it is however expensive on health services and few of the patients are able to maintain a job Dawn wigs was also dialyzing at home and hoping for a transplant I've done anything at home at home over a year and I got my first transplant that never worked very well but it lasted me for 20 months and I'd got another job and I was okay for a while and that failed I went back on dialysis again and I had another transplant after about nine months At Last of a week and I was worse off than I was before Bell Stone and Neil were determined to keep trying for a successful transplant in fact it was their kidney problems that brought them together well uh people are connected with the hospital it was a conference I was registering the doctors in and out and Neil was driving them turned from the airports and stations and we met there we joined the conference we were bored and started chatting and I had to get home and Neil took me home 10 months after their meeting they were married in the meantime Dawn had had a third transplant but there was an added complication a complication that has made medical history when I became pregnant I was I'd had my transplant and I was on a very new drug called smart exploring eye it's very exciting because when we told the doctor hospital that I was expecting him they said well we'll have to find out about the drug in pregnancy and when they tried to find out about the drug impregnancy they couldn't find out about it because no one had ever had a baby on the drug before Liam Wiggs was born healthy four kilos the first child to be born to a woman being treated with anti-rejection drugs a month after Liam's birth Neil had another transplant which so far has been successful how does the family feel now Phil but I am a kidney person I don't ever think about it going wrong now possibly because I got the baby and he's the most important thing now and I worry about him I suppose so much that I don't think about the kidney I don't think that uh I've got a transplant and I could be back on dialysis I don't want to think that you know you've got on my every in every situation you've got to make the best of what you've got right Neil thank you very much Neil Wiggs from Portsmouth giving us his view on the situation Beatrice Daily from new Milton now is the general opinion of the British public seems to display a willingness to donate organs there is perhaps more reluctance on the part of the medical profession for a doctor the loss of a patient can be a failure and the doctor must also seek the permission of the relatives Malcolm Merritt's parents had to face this tragic situation Malcolm he died on the 24th car crash um we waited around for about half an hour the surgeon came out and said very little chance or really he said it'd have to be a miracle and I wrote dropped Malcolm red a healthy happy active life very active life never known a day's illness you know he had a highlight of his life was he played at fratton Park and the 13 year olds we've got a letter of that saying how he felt we went to this room um waiting room and they said we could see Malcolm after they cleaned him up and we were waiting in there then a surgeon came in the consultant I believe and straight away you know beating around the bush said Malcolm has got two healthy kidneys what we think about donating in that moments of being in that position of losing someone we felt we couldn't say no because we like to give something we had Malcolm what he had during his life to someone else went through mine I felt I had to say it I just said you won't touch him unless he has gone he's left us completely you know he said oh yes we assure you that I like to feel if our kidneys did go to Young persons that their parents and them are getting to join the happiness that we have from our son that's 2400 years of our life for my son so I can say both Malcolm Merritt's kidneys were removed one transplant failed within a month the other after 20 months is still successful you're all looking very well on it actually I mean you seem to have been working very hard lately and probably at odd hours but you all look in the peak of Health formal Health has been I do anyway thank you very much in the progress of transplant surgery much depends on the cooperation of the public and medical staff d p z e d h h f b n z b d e u f u z on the 25th of January Stephen cope was admitted to hospital in London for a corneal transplant the site in his left eye was now almost zero three okay fine all right a routine examination showed the extent of the distortion in the reflection of the circular disc in the normal eye the circles are concentric but in the diseased eye the circles show a pair drop distortion right it is this area of the cornea that will be surgically replaced Stephen cope himself views the procedure with some apprehension of a very nervous because it's the first operation and being as it's my eyes as well I can't think of many of those places just in case the surgeon you know misses anything or just puts a knife in some way he shouldn't he seems quite efficient the operation starts by marking out and measuring a circle on the patient's eye that contains the distorted piece of cornea the surgery itself is considered to be a routine procedure and has been described by the surgeon himself as nothing more than carpentry but underneath the macroscope a