8 October (BNS) - A team of surgeons under Tanel Laisaar at the University of Tartu Clinical Hospital on Thursday performed the first ever lung transplant operation in Estonia. The results of the operation are in line with expectations at this point, spokespeople for the hospital said.

The surgery was performed on a 61-year-old woman from Tartu County who has been suffering from a chronic lung illness for years. Laisaar said the operation and the immediate postoperative period had gone as planned and the patient remains under doctors' care in the hospital's intensive care department.

Preparations for the launch of lung transplant operations in Estonia began almost three years ago when co-operation was started with doctors in Vienna. The programme has gone through several stages, including the training of the team and operating of the first Estonian patient in Vienna in collaboration with Viennese colleagues, spokespeople for the hospital added.
The first patient from Estonia to get a new lung in an operation performed by a team including doctor Laisaar was Natalja Pall, resident of the East Estonian small town of Mustvee, who was airlifted to Vienna on the night of 28 April last year with a chartered jet specially sent to fetch her when a suitable lung became available, the daily Õhtuleht reported.
Laisaar said there were four patients on the waiting list for a lung transplant in Estonia at this point and 10 more were being additionally examined with a view to the possibility of giving them a transplant. In a country the size of Estonia the number of such operations needed is from six to eight operations a year.