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One-stop clinic to serve patients’ needs and aid research, education
THOSE headed for organ or tissue transplants at theSingapore General Hospital (SGH) will be treated under the single roof of a comprehensive transplant centre by 2015.
The centre will bring together surgeons specialising in transplant operations and doctors of other specialities, along with nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and allied health professionals.
The one-stop clinic will mean that patients with other medical issues will no longer need to shuttle from one clinic to another, as they do now. This cuts the risk of their contracting infections, given that transplant patients often have low immunity, said Professor London Lucien Ooi, who heads SGH’s division of surgery and chairs the steering committee to develop the centre.
Besides serving the needs of transplant patients and their donors, centralising SGH’s eight transplant programmes will enable research to be done there, and health-care professionals across the transplant fields to undergo continuing education.
All this will, in turn, burnish Singapore’s reputation as a regional transplant hub.
The eight transplant programmes, which come under the umbrella of SingHealth Comprehensive Transplant Services, comprise those for single-organ transplants of the kidney, liver and heart/lung, and those for tissue transplants of the cornea, skin, stem cells from cord blood, bone marrow and cardiovascular homografts, which include the replacement of heart valves, blood vessels and windpipe.
Prof Ooi said the integration of the transplant specialities will be carried out in three phases:
- Training support staff and developing services such as pharmacy and social work specifically for transplant patients;
- Establishing a specialist outpatient clinic for organ transplant patients by 2012; and
- Setting up a transplant ward within the centre by 2015.
Applauding the move in his latest blog entry, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan said the transplant ward will be created only when the bed shortage problem has been eased.
“This way, a higher level of specialised skills and expertise can be rendered to the patients, maximising their chances,” he wrote.
The first chapter of Singapore’s transplant surgery history began 20 years ago, and the first lung transplant, 10 years ago.
To date, SGH has performed more than 1,200 kidney, 40 liver, 49 heart and nine lung transplants.
The only other public hospital that does transplant surgery is the National University Hospital. It has performed over 160 liver transplants to date and now has more than 550 kidney transplant patients under its care.
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