Page 4 - Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust Connect Summer 2019
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 4   LEEDS TEACHING HOSPITALS NHS TRUST - WWW.LEEDSTH.NHS.UK
  Gearing up for the Transplant Games
Gearing up for the
 Transplant Games
   Leeds Children’s Hospital is well known for delivering a range of specialist services but it comes as a surprise to many to hear that the hospital also nurtures some of the UK’s best sporting talent!
This year, Leeds will once again be taking part in the British Transplant Games. Founded in 1978, the Games aim to demonstrate the benefits of transplantation, encouraging transplant patients to regain fitness, whilst also working to increase public awareness of the need for more people to join the NHS Organ Donation Register and discuss their wishes with their families. The Games are also a way of thanking donors and their families for the gift of life.
The Leeds Children’s Transplant Team is made up of children and young people who have had a liver, kidney or bone marrow transplant with up to 30 competitors taking part in the British Transplant Games each year.
Participants compete in a wide range of sports including swimming, table tennis, as well as track and field events. The team is certainly a force to be reckoned with and last year they took home a haul of 60 medals from the Games.
Keeping active is a key component in staying well for children and young people who have experienced a transplant. Our specialist transplant team - including nurses, physio and occupational therapists, surgeons and play specialists - ensures that patients are holistically supported from pre-transplantation to post-surgery and into adulthood. They actively encourage children and young
people to take part in a range of sports with the option to join the Leeds Children’s Transplant Team, which offers a chance to meet other transplant patients and form lifelong friendships.
This year, 25 children and young people from the Leeds Children’s Transplant Team are taking part in the British Transplant Games which are being held in Newport. Seven competitors have also been selected to represent Great Britain at the World Transplant Games in Gateshead.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals is a regional centre for transplant. Our liver and kidney transplantation teams continue to provide complex, specialist and tertiary renal services for the population of the Yorkshire and Humber region. We are the largest solid organ transplant centre in the UK and the third largest liver transplant centre. In 2018/19 our teams performed 322 kidney and liver transplants.
The British Transplant Games are the flagship project of the charity Transplant Sport and have been in existence for over
40 years when the first Transplant Olympics took place in Portsmouth in 1978. Since then, the Games have gone from strength to strength and are now held every year in different cities across the UK. There have so far been 17 host cities across the UK with Birmingham being last to host the Games in 2018.
  




















































































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