The regional disparity in transplant activity is one of the main problems in Brazil and in other countries. Brazilian transplant centers are concentrated in the coastal states, while there is a lack of transplant centers in the entire Midwest, northern and northeastern part.

From 2009 to 2016, our group started the project TRANSPLANTS WITHOUT BORDERS(TWB), in which an experienced team in liver, pancreas and kidney transplants goes to the target state and develops the program, training human resources and institution in locus. The training begins with workshops and visits twice a month and, after a period from 3 to 6 months , transplants are finally started.

During this period, there were 386 transplants in seven different states of the Midwest, North and Northeast of Brazil, with 131 liver and 255 kidney transplants. Patient and graft survival was over 90% in all programs initiated in these states, demonstrating that it is possible, with an in locus tutoring of an experienced team, skip the learning curve and achieve excellent results since the beginning.

The traveling tutor team from TWB covered a 2.600.000km2 area of ​​the country for training these distant centers, equivalent to an area of ​​western europe or the sun belt region in the US.

This is a new method for in locus training and development of transplant centers and proved to be very efficient for large countries, achieving excellent results in the short term.

CITATION INFORMATION: Perosa M, Branez J, Mota L, Zeballos B, Noujaim H, Paredes M, Miranda T, Martinho G, Genzini T. Transplant without Borders – A New Project for Decentralization of Transplant Centers in Brazil. Am J Transplant. 2017;17 (suppl 3).

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