Lisbon’s Curry Cabral Hospital is this week celebrating 25 years in which it has carved an extraordinary reputation for liver transplants and interventions.
President of the Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa attended the anniversary commemorations, stressing the “debt of gratitude” that the country has to this centre that now leads the way in Europe.
With 2000 successful liver transplants to its name, founder and hospital director Eduardo Barroso has been telling reporters how when he went to Cambridge as a young man to study transplants, colleagues who “today are illustrious surgeons told me that there would never be a liver transplant in Portugal.
“Today we are 12 performing with excellent results. I have trained surgeons who are accepted in any centre throughout the world”.
The future? “To take advantage of the means given to us to realise transplants and go further – perform surgeries on liver tumours, the pancreas and bile ducts”.
Barroso, whose former patients turned up in force to salute him – one having received her transplant right at the start of his career, 25 years ago – added that he still tries to make a point of getting to know all his patients, although now that there are so many of them he no longer knows all their phone numbers.
