ANZKX Christmas Communique

The ANZKX team would like to thank all of you for your engagement and hard work with the program throughout 2021.

While 2021 was another challenging year, we wish to acknowledge everyone’s endeavours to help Australian and New Zealand patients with end stage kidney disease to receive a transplant.

In 2021, 53 patients had a kidney transplant facilitated by the program with an additional 3 patients in a chain awaiting surgery in the New Year.

Other changes and news from ANZKX in 2021 include:

• The number of compatible pairs entering ANZKX has continued to increase with 11 pairs enrolled in 2021. We wish to acknowledge the transplant units who have entered these pairs, who can not only benefit individually but also help to match others in the program.

• The program moved to continuous matching. This improved workflow by avoiding the peaks and troughs of activity created by match runs. Over 100 offers have been made throughout the year. Transplanting units have worked hard to reply promptly to offers and facilitate theatre times. The time from match offer to transplant improved to 58 days, despite the logistics of limited flights on certain routes in 2021.

• Charter flights enabled a number of chains to be performed in 2021 which facilitated 10 transplants. ANZKX acknowledges the support of Air Charter Service and StarTrack courier service throughout the year.

• The program is currently transitioning its registry to OrganMatch which will mean that all clinical and tissue typing data is held within the one system. We appreciate the efforts of Narelle Watson and her team in developing the ANZKX section of the OrganMatch Transplantation Portal which will be functional in 2022.

• COVID-19 has impacted on the delivery of services across the transplant sector. ANZKX continues to employ COVID-19 protocols with the support of the transplanting units. Matching is still being performed separately in Australia and New Zealand however we are hopeful that we will be able to start matching between countries again early in 2022.

The program also wishes to thank the Organ Tissue Authority who continue to support the program and its ongoing development.

We wish everyone a safe, healthy and happy Christmas and New Year and we look forward to working with you in 2022.

With kind regards from the ANZKX team,

Peter Hughes – Program Director

Stella McGinn – Program Deputy Director

Linda Cantwell – Tissue Typing Coordinator         

Emma van Hardeveld – Program Coordinator

Belinda Jones – Deputy Program Coordinator