First Successful Kidney Transplant

Date: October 30, 1960 • Location: Danderhall, United Kingdom

At the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Michael Woodruff performed the first successful kidney transplantation in the United Kingdom.

The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) is the oldest voluntary hospital in Scotland. It was established in 1729. After moving to a new site in 1879, it claimed to be the largest voluntary hospital in the United Kingdom, and later, in the British Empire. In 2003, it moved to a 900-bed site at Little France. It is the site of clinical medicine teaching as well as a teaching hospital for the University of Edinburgh Medical School. In 1960 the first successful kidney transplant in the UK was performed at the hospital. In 1964 the world's first coronary care unit was established at the hospital. It is the only site for liver, pancreas, and pancreatic islet cell transplantation in Scotland, and one of the country's two sites for kidney transplantation. In 2012, the Emergency Department had 113,000 patient attendances, the highest number in Scotland. It is managed by NHS Lothian.