Services

Our current and developing services for liver, pancreas, renal and islet transplantation.

Our transplant unit is multidisciplinary. The day-to-day running of the unit involves transplant surgeons, nephrologists, hepatologists, anaesthetists, transplant co-ordinators, middle and junior grade doctors, nursing staff, pharmacists and dieticians.

But important contributions are also made by a large number of other services including psychiatry, microbiology, virology, radiology, blood transfusion and social work, physiotherapy, occupational therapy.

Liver disease has increased rapidly in Scotland in recent years. The unit undertook 76 liver transplants in 2009 and is predicted to undertake more than 90 in 2011.

The Scottish Liver Transplant Unit undertakes donation after cardiac death (DCD) and donation after brain death (DBD) liver transplants.

It is also is very active in liver splitting procedures. The unit has performed two living donor liver transplant and continues to evaluate other donor-recipient pairings.


The Scottish Pancreas Transplant Unit provides a national service for Scotland for adults with diabetes mellitus (Type One) who may benefit from pancreas transplantation, usually with a simultaneous kidney transplant.

We are funded directly by the Scottish Executive.

Currently we are contracted to undertake 15 simultaneous pancreas/ kidney transplants with an additional three pancreas-only transplants per year.


We provide renal transplant services for patients from the following Health regions:

  • Lothian and the Borders
  • Fife
  • Tayside
  • Grampian
  • Highland (Inverness)
  • Shetland
  • Orkney

Currently the unit undertakes approximately 90-100 renal transplants per year. Of these, 60-65 are cadaveric and 30-35 live donor.


This unit was commissioned in April 2010.

Islet transplantation is now an established service.The first transplant was performed earlier this year

Our state of the art isolation facility is planned to move to the Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine when that opens in 2011-2012.

This national service will provide treatment for suitable diabetics with hypoglycaemic unawareness and selected other patients.


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