I help make decisions about whether the most precious of resources, a donated organ, can be safely transplanted into a waiting patient.
Tissue typing is an ever evolving discipline and as a clinical scientist, I have to assess the risk involved in an organ transplant. I will receive a blood sample from a potential donor, and extract and analyse the DNA to determine the donor’s tissue type. With the help of an algorithm, we identify potential recipients from the waiting list to see who is most eligible and compare tissue types and the presence of antibodies. Some antibodies react to other people’s tissue and would cause an organ to be rejected. Everyone who is active on a transplant waiting list has a blood test every three months so we have the right information on their antibodies.
It is a cruel irony of a transplant that someone has died for it to happen. I have enormous respect for all the professionals involved in this process, especially the specialist nurses who have sensitive conversations with families about organ donation.
Loved ones can find it comforting to know their family member or friend has given someone else a huge gift.
Graham
There are hundreds of patients waiting for organs, we have around 200 patients currently waiting for a kidney and around 100 people waiting for a heart or lung.
Sadly, we have to say no to heart and lung transplants more often than others. We have to get the call right for our patients. An incorrect call can be catastrophic. It is difficult to think about patients waiting, it doesn’t feel good to deny a potential transplant because it’s incompatible. But, we are denying them something that wouldn’t help them, and could be very harmful.
Transplants in the UK are facilitated by an NHS central hub based in Bristol. There are 15 tissue typing labs in the country and CUH is a specialist hospital for kidney, pancreas, liver and multi-visceral transplants and Papworth for heart and lung transplants. We provide an on-call service so are ready to analyse a sample as soon as it becomes available. Once we have analysed the tissue and determined the risk of a transplant, we do find out if it happens and are involved in testing post-transplant too, so we monitor the patient’s progress as they recover. With the advances in laboratory techniques, we can accurately avoid a hyperacute rejection, which is when an organ dies within minutes of being connected to a patient’s bloodstream. Some kidneys will last two years, other patients will be set for life. With a successful transplant, the change to a patient’s quality of life is immense.
I have worked in the tissue typing lab for 10 years and been a clinical scientist for 5 years. Science was my favourite subject at school and I studied healthcare science at college, spending two days a week doing work experience in various pathology departments. After this I applied to work as a phlebotomist. At my interview, a woman called Barbara Bewley suggested that I’d be more suited to a career as a Biomedical Scientist. She found a role for me to train and work at the same time in the Clinical Biochemistry and Immunology department here at CUH. It was an enormous moment in my career and Barbara’s kindness had a huge impact on my life.