A team of Saskatoon physicians performed Canada's first successful kidney re-transplant at Royal University Hospital in 1964. Stella Mossing was 19 years old and had been married for five months at the time of the operation. She received a kidney donated by her mother. Unfortunately it failed within hours of the operation, but a second kidney from an accident victim was successfully transplanted. A total of forty-nine physicians participated in assessment and evaluation; no less than fourteen surgical procedures were required. Dr. Neville J. Jackson, a vascular surgeon, led the re-transplant surgical team using techniques that had been in existence for less than a year. At the time, only five kidney transplants of any kind had been performed in Canada. Dialysis was also in its infancy, offering only a brief window of time for doctors to find a suitable kidney and save the patient's life. The Saskatoon team, a pioneer in the field, performed ten of the first 100 kidney transplants in Canada.
Joe Ralko