The first medical association in Lviv was visited by the legend of world transplantology Robert Montgomery. His team was the first in the world to transplant a pig kidney. And he himself lives with a donor heart and is entered in the Guinness Book of Records.
Robert Montgomery spent two days in Lviv. During this time he managed not only to give lectures to doctors, but also took part in three kidney transplants performed by a team of transplantologists from Lviv TMO.
“Without exaggeration, the experience shared by the professor is invaluable, as are the prospects for our cooperation. Professor Montgomery’s visit to Lviv is about supporting Ukraine and Ukrainians, “Lviv doctors said.
Professor Robert Montgomery is director of the Langon Institute of Transplantation at New York University. He and the team of John Hopkins once conceived and implemented the idea of cross-donation, performing in 2010 ten transplants in one day. This day and the contribution of Robert Montgomery are recorded in the Guinness Book of Records.
Professor Montgomery himself lives with a donor heart. After a septic shock in Argentina in 2017, he suffered seven heart attacks and lay in a coma for a month. Robert says it was a turning point not only in his life, but perhaps also in transplant science. Then he realized – the future of xenotransplantation, when you do not have to wait for someone’s death to survive.
Thus, in September 2021, a team led by Robert Montgomery performed the first xenotransplantation of a human kidney. The organ of a genetically modified pig was given to a patient who was diagnosed with brain death and had renal impairment. This was a breakthrough in the world of transplantation.