The Catholic University of Korea Seoul St. Mary's Hospital celebrated the successful recovery of its 4,000th kidney transplant patient on Monday.
The 4,000th patient, a woman in her 60s, was diagnosed with glomerulonephritis in 2023 during a routine checkup following breast cancer surgery. She started kidney dialysis in 2024, and thanks to her sister's voluntary organ donation, she underwent a living kidney transplant on Feb. 5 and regained her health.
Seoul St. Mary's Hospital has been performing kidney transplants since March 25, 1969, when it successfully operated for the first time in Korea. The hospital was located in Myong-dong, central Seoul, at the time.
Seoul St. Mary's Hospital has an impressive history of kidney transplants. Among its transplant recipients, eight have survived more than 40 years, 69 for over 30 years, and 185 for over 20 years. The longest survivor, a man in his 60s, is now in his 43rd year post-transplant. The 10-year survival rate of transplanted kidneys has also improved significantly, from 23 percent in the 1970s to 78 percent in the 2010s.
The hospital has also pioneered high-demand surgeries, including blood group incompatibility transplantation (450 cases), re-transplantation, and transplantation of immunologically high-risk patients. In addition, it has successfully performed kidney transplantation after desensitization treatment for highly sensitized patients, simultaneous liver-kidney transplantation, transplantation for patients with intractable blood diseases, and immune tolerance induction transplantation.
A multidisciplinary team of expert coordinators from the Departments of Vascular and Transplantation Surgery, Nephrology, Urology, Diagnostic Laboratory, Nephropathology, and the Center for Organ Transplantation has supported the performance.
“It is the result of the donors' noble will and the medical staff's sincere heart,” said Dr. Park Soon-cheol, director of the Center for Organ Transplantation. “We will continue to do our best to provide hope to patients needing organ transplantation.”