Marius Berman has been appointed as the Associate National Clinical Lead for Organ Retrieval for NHS Blood and Transplant.
He is the first Royal Papworth surgeon – and the first-ever cardiothoracic surgeon - to hold the position and will be in post for the next three years.
“I am very passionate about organ donation and retrieval. It was an extremely competitive process so it is an incredible honour for both me and Royal Papworth to have been chosen for this position,” he said.
“There are three main challenges facing transplantation in the UK at the moment and that is what I hope to help address; capacity of cardiothoracic and abdominal retrieval teams, workforce, and novel technologies in organ perfusion. I am also looking forward to increasing research within the organ retrieval domain.”
Mr Berman has worked at Royal Papworth for 13 years, with the last four years as the hospital’s National Organ Retrieval Service (NORS) lead.
He headed the translation of the research program for DCD heart transplantation into clinical routine practice, with 56 recipients to date making it the largest programme in the world.
Additionally, Marius led the team into successfully retrieving the first clinical cases in the UK using portable lung reconditioning, with extended donor criteria, and has overseen the retrieval of the smallest pair of lungs in the UK, from a six-week old baby.