Barcelona- He Vall d’Hebron University Hospitalin Barcelona successfully completed the first transplant of Spain between two people with HIV live, specifically kidney, after the legal veto for these interventions was lifted last year among patients with an infection that, today, is still a source of stigma.
The team of doctors from the Barcelona hospital who participated in this process explained this Friday, in a press conference, that Both recipient and donor, who are middle-aged and have preferred to remain anonymous, are in good health after the intervention.
They have also not suffered problems from the combinations of their own medication after receiving a transplant – immunosuppressants to prevent rejection of the new kidney – and the usual antiretroviral treatment regimen for HIV.
In Spain, the order authorizing transplantation between donors and recipients with HIV was approved in 2025, repealing a 1987 regulation that prohibited itto.
Of course, since 2005, people with this virus could already receive organs from donors without HIV, as long as they met a series of requirements, such as having an undetectable or suppressible viral load through antiretroviral treatment and not having had opportunistic infections, except for tuberculosis, esophageal candidiasis or Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia.
In Europeonly six countries expressly allow transplants between two people with HIV, which has translated into around 70 kidney transplants since 2011, concentrated essentially in the United Kingdom, Italy and France, although all of them from a deceased donor; There are only two living cases, explained the general director of the National Transplant Organization (ONT)Beatriz Domínguez-Gil.
Every year, 50 people with HIV wait for an organ in Spain: 30 a kidney transplant, 15 a liver transplant and 5 a heart, lung or pancreas transplant, according to data from the ONT.
Thus, “lifting this legal impediment can also contribute to alleviating waiting lists,” stated the coordinator of Vall d’Hebron Donation and Transplant Programs, Albert Sandiumenge.
Regarding the surgical intervention carried out in the Barcelona hospital, the fact that the patients have HIV did not change the usual procedure of a kidney transplant in any way.
Urologist Enric Trilla explained that the intervention lasted four hours and was done with robotic surgery, which means “less physical impact for the patient than conventional surgery, since it reduces the risk of infection, promotes postoperative recovery and reduces complications of the abdominal wall.”