Thirteen-year-old Dorka, a cystic fibrosis patient, was placed on a waiting list for a lung transplant in a deteriorated condition last year. The surgery was performed at the end of March. The recipient is undergoing rehabilitation and no longer requires a sterile setting.

Béla Merkely, Semmelweis University’s Vice-Rector for Clinical Affairs, said the successful surgery helped advance Hungary’s field of organ transplantation. The university’s development programme places special emphasis on infrastructure developments related to organ transplantation, he said.

The university’ surgeons perform more than 500 heart, 170 kidney, 80 liver and four pancreas transplant surgeries a year, the vice-rector added.

Miklós Kásler, director of the National Institute of Oncology, said that since 2015, when the adult lung transplant programme began in Hungary, only one Hungarian patient had needed to be operated on in Vienna. He said less than 100 lung transplantations are performed on children a year worldwide.