Kelowna doctor recognized for role in bringing lung transplant program to B.C.
Dr. Guy Fradet awarded Dr. Joel D Cooper Award for outstanding contribution to lung transplantation in Canada
A Kelowna doctor has been recognized for his pioneering work in bringing a lung transplant program to British Columbia.
Dr. Guy Fradet, now Interior Health’s cardiac program medical director, was director of the B.C. Lung Transplant program in its early years and part of the team that established the program.
Last week, the Canadian Society of Transplantation awarded Fradet the Dr. Joel D Cooper Award for outstanding contribution to lung transplantation in Canada. The award is named after the Canadian doctor who performed the world’s first successful lung transplant in Toronto in 1983.
In an interview with the Provincial Health Services Authority, Fradet explained that he came to B.C. in the early 1980s to train under another Kelowna surgeon, Dr. Bill Nelems, B.C.’s first thoracic surgeon, was interested in developing a lung transplant program in this province. Nelems died earlier this year. “I spent some time training in England, which was at the forefront of lung transplantation. While there, I performed a few heart-lung transplants on people from Vancouver, and that really opened my eyes to the need for a program back home,” Fradet said in the interview.
“Back then, lung transplantation wasn’t available in B.C., or even Western Canada, so lots of people — mostly kids — had to go to England for the surgery. Many died there waiting or had to recover for a long period of time after what is a difficult and traumatic surgery. When they came home, there wasn’t a lot of expertise to support them. This was the main incentive for us to develop the program,” he said.
“We were able to put together a good, innovative program. We took good care of patients and we started to see excellent results. We developed a scientific process of data collection and management and looking at our outcomes to address shortcomings.
“Now, there’s a bank of knowledge and the people working in those years contributed to making the science what it is today. We started when transplant was so new and exciting to today, when in many cases it’s almost a routine procedure.”
Forty lung transplants took place in B.C. in 2016.