Two thirds of hospital’s transplant patients died after five years

Lung transplant patients in Birmingham are facing significantly worse survival rates as a “sobering” report has revealed two-thirds of patients have died within five years, The Independent has learned.

Survival rates for lung transplant patients at University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust after five years are now almost 20 percentage points lower than the other main hospitals specialising in lung transplants.

The latest figures from NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) have revealed Birmingham’s five-year survival rates decreased from 79% in 2015-16 to 31% in 2020-21, and have consistently been the lowest compared to the other four other transplant hospitals in Newscastle, Cambridgeshire, London and Manchester.

The latest NHSBT’s report showed of those patients who had a transplant in Birmingham between 2012 to 2016, 31 per cent survived. During the same period in Newcastle 47 per cent of patients survived, in Papworth and Manchester 51%, while London’s Royal Harefield recorded a 56 per cent survival rate.

Birmingham recorded the lowest patient survival rates 90 days after surgery and for one year after surgery between 2016-17 to 2020-21. Although for these measures the hospital was within the national average, unlike its five-year survival rates.

One transplant surgeon has raised concerns over the continued poor survival rates at Birmingham, claiming they showed the “staggering” failure for the programme in the city to improve.

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Source: The Independent, 23 November 2021