NKTI marks 30th founding anniversary, transplant week

MANILA, Philippines - Last Monday, the National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI) kicked off its 30th founding anniversary and transplant week with a Mass and commemoration ceremony attended by several of its founding doctors, medical specialists, and current medical team.

The celebration not only commemorates the past 30 years of NKTI, but also celebrates over 5,000 successful transplant procedures done at the leading tertiary renal referral center in the country, a great milestone for its 30th year.

“NKTI ranks among the largest single medical centers doing a large number of transplants in the world,” Dr. Jose Dante Dator, deputy executive director for medical services, said.

“We are constantly striving to address the needs of the Filipino patient on a global level of healthcare, offering them the same world-class service and treatment that they can find in the best centers anywhere in the world,” Dator added.

“We do about 200 to 250 kidney transplants a year, mostly from live donors,” Dr. Romina Danguilan, chairman of the Department of Adult Nephrology, said. “We also do at least two to three liver transplants per year.”

The NKTI has evolved and changed through the years since it began in 1981 as the National Kidney Foundation of the Philippines (NKFP) and formally opened in February 1983. 

In the same year, the need for deceased organs for transplantation was immediately recognized and a directive to start an organ retrieval program was issued and called C.O.R.E. (Cadaver Organ Retrieval Effort). This was later renamed H.O.P.E. (Human Organ Preservation Effort) in 1990. It remains the lead organ procurement organization and the longest running one, in the country.

H.O.P.E. has transplant coordinators trained to brave weather and circumstance to evaluate potential organ donors from Batanes to Jolo 24/7 to achieve its goal of providing the needed organs for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) who have no living donors.

“H.O.P.E. continues to be one of the most important advocacies of the hospital,” Danguilan said.

“Providing the needed organs gives patients with ESRD the chance for a new life, free from lifetime dialysis. Each year, about 10,000 new patients start dialysis, a process that removes poisons and excess water from patients whose kidneys have failed,” Danguilan said.

“Patients who start hemodialysis have to go to a dialysis center three times a week and stay connected to a dialysis machine for four hours for the treatment, for life. A kidney transplant allows patients to go back to a normal life, without dialysis,” Danguilan added.

The number of deceased organ donors though comprises only five percent of the total number of transplants per year. This is a very low number and the advocacy to increase the number of deceased organ donor referrals needs improvement. “We should all carry an organ donor card and inform our loved ones that we want to donate all our healthy organs in case of death, to help others live,” Danguilan said. “We always say ‘don’t bring your organs to heaven, because heaven knows we need them here.’”

In addition to H.O.P.E. and several other important programs and advocacies including forums and information dissemination, Dator said the NKTI has improved and upgraded its facilities and equipment throughout the years, “expanding our hospital bed-capacity to provide the best facilities for quality tertiary medical services, including improvements to our medical units, emergency and operating rooms’ services, and out-patient services.”

“We also have the most modern Hemodialysis Center with more than 40 state-of-the-art dialysis machines running almost 24 hours a day. We also offer peritoneal dialysis that can be performed in the comfort and convenience of home, starting with about 20 to 30 new patients a month. We likewise recently opened the most advanced Diagnostics Center with a 256-slice CT Scan and a 3-Tesla MRI and will soon open a Liver Center, Wound Care and Vascular Lab,” Dator added.

The NKTI is the country’s leader in providing continuing education and training in kidney diseases and transplantation, for young doctors through internship, residency, and fellowship programs.

“We are the biggest kidney specialist training center in the Philippines,” Danguilan said. “We currently have 16 fellows and our graduates go all over the country to serve our Filipino patients with kidney diseases. We have the only training program for transplant surgeons in the country. “

As it was in the early days, the NKTI continues to strive for excellence and provides quality healthcare for all Filipinos. Kidney transplantation is a regular activity of the hospital and NKTI holds the record for most number of kidney transplants performed in the country since 1983.

Other organ transplants have also been done in the institute, including liver, pancreas, bone marrow, and combined organ transplants.

As the NKTI celebrates it 30th anniversary, it will also launch its latest effort to provide more kidney failure patients the opportunity to get the life-saving kidney transplant they need. 

Through the new PhilHealth benefit for catastrophic diseases or Z Package partnership between PhilHealth and NKTI, qualified PhilHealth members can now avail themselves of the Z benefits for low-risk end-stage kidney disease requiring transplantation, amounting to P600,000.

“This is a milestone in kidney disease care,” Danguilan said. “Kidney transplantation is still the best option for optimal survival for kidney failure patients, with an overall survival rate of up to 98.7 percent for the first year, and 92.3 percent at three years. 

The package covers pre-transplant laboratory exams for donor and recipient, hospitalization for the transplant operation for both donor and recipient, operating room fees, immunosuppression induction therapy, and post- transplant laboratory monitoring of donor up to one year and up to one month for the recipient. Through a pre-authorization screening process done by the patient’s doctors and PhilHealth, patients can be screened for qualification to avail themselves of the package. 

“We have done five transplant procedures under the Z package,” Danguilan said. “We are looking forward to doing more, especially for our government-subsidized patients.”

In addition to kidney transplant packages, the PhilHealth Z Package also offers packages for other catastrophic diseases, including early stage breast and prostate cancers and childhood leukemia. These packages will continue to expand as the program grows.

Along with its anniversary celebration, the NKTI is also hosting the one-day “Solving the Immunological Puzzle” workshop today and the three-day third Joint Transplant Symposium of the Transplantation Society of the Philippines and the Philippine Society for Transplant Surgeons dubbed “Facing the Unmet Challenges in Kidney Transplantation” starting today.