It is 25 years since surgeons carried out the first heart transplant in Poland.

The operation was done on a 62 year-old by a team of doctors from Zabrze headed by pioneering professor Zbigniew Religa, who later went on to become a health minister in the Law and Justice government (2005-07).

Since then, surgeons in Zabrze have carried out almost 28 thousand operations, with almost 900 transplants of heart, heart and lungs, and heart and kidneys.

The Silesian Centre for Heart Diseases has gone on to operate on Poland’s youngest cardiac patient, a seven month-old toddler, and the oldest, a 103 year-old women. (ek)