Around a large table, dozens of people White robes and orange pajamas They talk in a relaxed manner, exchanging opinions and concerns. There are men and women, of different ages, but they are all fighting the same battle. There is laughter, demands and a shared feeling: … This is from commitment. It can be a family meal on Sunday. Their relationship seems very close. Some say, They know them better here than at home. They spend long hours together. Leaving the 24-hour guard and telling the entering colleague: “Anything, call me,” they say, is an almost automatic phrase. Attending complex surgeries Where they know they can add their expertise, Even if they are already off their schedule Work too.
Twelve pairs of hands, some larger, others smaller, but all working brilliantly when the time comes to give life. They are the protagonists (and they are everyone in the picture, but not everyone there) of a reality that has the ingredients of any TV fantasy: pressure, frenetic pace, unexpected turns, and the desire to move forward. Welcome to University Hospital Puerta de Hierro Majadahondathe place where Pioneering transplant operations in Spain.
Since they performed their first kidney transplant in 1968, they have achieved various achievements, e.g The first team in the world to perform a liver transplant to treat serious injuries; Being pioneers in Spain in launching the Donor in Controlled Asystole (DANC) program for lung transplantation, in collaboration with the San Carlos Clinical Hospital in Madrid, in 2002; To be a national reference center in heart and lung transplantation in adults and children, and thanks to an agreement with the University Hospital of La Paz, in 2013 we succeeded in performing the first pediatric surgery with these characteristics in the Community of Madrid.
In 2012 it became Great promoter of donation in controlled contraction (from a donor who died due to cardiorespiratory arrest and not due to brain death) in our country and, more recently, in 2023, added another historic achievement when it became the first Spanish hospital to perform surgical procedures 1000 heart transplants, 1000 liver transplants and 1000 lung transplants. In 2020, they were the first Spanish hospital to perform an asystolic donor heart transplant, and in 2025, they performed the first heart-lung transplant in Spain of a “resuscitated” heart and lungs. They are able to handle very complex operations that require a high degree of interdisciplinary coordination such as pooled and sequential organ transplants.
This call to always be one step ahead has a lot to do with the profile of the professionals who worked in this center and who created a way of working that has been passed down between generations of healthcare workers. “From the beginning they had a culture of cultivating, of being pioneers, of always doing new things. “They were never satisfied,” explains Dr. Marina Pérez Redondo, Puerta de Hierro’s transplant coordinator, during the meeting ABC held with the center’s specialists at a table where people keep joining.
Longest transplant
Another thing that distinguishes them, and which has great weight in the way they work, is the close relationship between all the agriculture programs, which complement each other. “This is it The only hospital that specifically targets various organ transplant programs. In other places, each program runs on an independent line, and it is rare for them to work together. “The integration here is so great that we share a hospital treatment floor,” says Dr. Jose Bortoles, chief of the nephrology service.
These synergies represent added value for transplant patients, not only in cases of simultaneous organ transplants, but also in sequential organ transplants: those performed at different times in life. “Any solid organ transplant recipient receives a potentially toxic drug, and there comes a time when the kidneys become ill because of this toxicity in patients who have survived a long time in the lung, liver or heart. “We have dozens of patients who underwent a kidney transplant and were transplanted from other organs,” Bortolis continues, recalling a noteworthy case. “The longest kidney transplant in the world, dare I say it, takes place in this hospital. It was a living transplant that took place between two sisters, in their early twenties, and It has been in operation for more than 52 years. This was done in “heroic times” when tests had to be sent to France, in the old building. The patient later developed liver failure and underwent a liver transplant. He is at home and living a normal life. “It is a very favorable condition for transplantation in very young people.”
This very special way of working at the medical and surgical level is, in the opinion of Dr. José Luis Lucena, Head of the Department of General Surgery, also useful for Patients who do not need a transplantand. “The relationship that we have between the groups means that with other patients with very complex diseases, even though it is not necessary to do a transplant, we work in a much more coordinated and better way, with Perhaps a higher surgical level than in other places. “It’s an important factor that sets this hospital apart from others who don’t have transplants here.”
This is a position that has been passed down between generations until now. “I trained here and grew up seeing this motivation from the adults. We all want to improve and increase the number of quality transplants. “We’ve learned that and it’s going to stay with us,” says Dr. Alejandra Romero, a thoracic surgeon.
For Javier Garcia, head of the Department of Anesthesiology, the success of the transplant program is “impossible without… A commitment that transcends any kind of commitmentAnd schedules and wages… Because there are a large number of exceptional and unexpected situations that you cannot organize and which, in almost all organ transplant operations, require additional involvement of some or most of the components. This means that we must have very flexible relationships, even though sometimes the spark jumps. But we can say, above all, that the patient is at the center, and that it is a question of whether that person lives or does not live, and this means that in the end we are all doing the best we can.
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