The vast majority of Saskatchewan patients waiting for kidney transplants will still have to travel to Alberta for the surgery despite an announcement Friday by the minister of health.
"St. Paul's Hospital will provide living-related donor transplants and, in fact, the first transplant is scheduled to occur in September when the donor and recipient pair are ready," Health Minister Don McMorris said at a news conference Friday.
No date has been set for that surgery.
Since July 2009, patients requiring kidney transplants have been transferred to University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton because the vascular surgeons who performed the surgery in Saskatoon weren't able or willing to do the work.
"We were just stretched too thin with the limited physician resources we had. These physicians obviously do other types of surgery and this was a small part of their practice," said Maura Davies, president and CEO of Saskatoon Health Region.
But the vascular surgeons are back on board, she says. They are prepared to work with urologists to perform living-donor transplants that can be scheduled, eliminating on-call coverage. They will also be paid more for the surgeries.
Between July 2009 and the end of August 2010, 25 Saskatchewan patients have received kidney transplants in Edmonton, according to the Ministry of Health. The Saskatoon Health Region says the number is 24. Either way, only four of those transplants involved living donors. The remaining 20 or 21 patients received kidneys from people who died and whose families consented to having organs retrieved for transplantation. It's those deceased-donor transplants that will continue to be performed in Edmonton.
"The people who don't have a living donor are certainly left still wondering what their future is like," said the NDP's health critic, Judy Junor, in a telephone interview.
"I didn't hear any indication of a timeline for the resumption for the whole service."
In April, McMorris set a mid-July to mid-August deadline for the startup of the surgical portion of the kidney transplant program. He said then and repeated on Friday that the goal was an aggressive one.
"When I mentioned that four months and two weeks ago, I probably didn't take into consideration the issues of July and August and holidays that we all like to take and certainly the physicians are no different," said McMorris.
On Friday, he wouldn't say when deceased-donor transplants will be moved back to St. Paul's Hospital, where the provincial transplant program is based. The key is recruiting dedicated kidney transplant urologic surgeons to do the bulk of the transplants, with the vascular surgeons and urologists providing backup, according to a report on the Saskatchewan program prepared by two London, Ont., kidney specialists.
"This is not an easy task to find people skilled and trained in transplant surgery," said Davies, who added Friday's announcement will help with recruitment.
In announcing the partial resumption of the service, McMorris also committed to spend between $1.5 million and $2.5 million more to bolster the program. Some of the money will be spent on recruiting those highly skilled surgeons and some will be spent to raise awareness among the public of the importance of organ donation. The money will almost double the existing budget of $2.1 million for the Saskatchewan Transplant Program, which also co-ordinates donations of other organs and tissue.
The cost of transferring patients for kidney transplants to Edmonton between July 2009 and August 2010 was close to $1 million. The Saskatchewan government paid the Alberta government $870,000 for physician and hospital costs and it spent another $33,350 for travel and accommodation expenses for patients and their families.
"(The suspension of the kidney program) has duplicated costs, since payments at the inter-provincial rate have gone to Alberta while the existing infrastructure in Saskatchewan has been maintained," wrote the Ontario physicians in their 26-page report.
Absent from Friday's news conference and unavailable for an interview later in the day was the medical director of the Saskatchewan Transplant Program. Dr. Ahmed Shoker was invited to attend the news conference, but not invited to speak. A nephrologist who has worked with the program since 1992, Shoker expressed frustration in April when contract negotiations with the vascular surgeons broke down and the only plan the government had was to send patients out of the province.
As of Friday, 116 Saskatchewan patients were "worked up and ready" for a transplant from a deceased donor. Another 150 patients still need to have medical tests before being added to the waiting list for a deceased-donor organ. Only nine patients are either waiting for a kidney transplant from a living donor or in the process of preparing for such a transplant.
lhaight@sp.canwest.com
Copyright (c) CW Media Inc.