A major milestone has been achieved at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) with the 4,000^th liver transplant carried out by the hospital Trust.

The landmark operation was performed recently by Liver Transplant Surgeon Simon Bramhall on a female patient who had been suffering from chronic liver disease.

He said the patient had very advanced disease at the time of going on the list and, as the list order is based on disease severity, she was given priority.

The patient, Sharon Bromage, aged 53, from Swindon, Wiltshire, had only been on the transplant waiting list for a day despite the national shortage of organ donors.

She said: “They put me on the list and then the very next day after I got a phone call to say ‘we have found a liver for you’. I was totally shocked.”

Sharon has been married to husband Gary for 33 years, with the couple having four grown-up children, plus a fifth child they have legally adopted. They also currently look after three foster children.

She added: “I had been ill for quite a while, probably a couple of years. I was bright yellow, looking nine months pregnant, and was out of breath most of the time. My cholesterol was also sky high. Everything seemed to be closing in.

“I found out after my operation that I was the 4000^th liver transplant carried out here, which is quite a landmark. But then any transplant is a landmark for the hospital, which has been absolutely wonderful.”

Gary has now sold the convenience store they owned in Swindon to look after his wife.

He said: “Sharon has been ill for a couple of years, but has been gradually deteriorating during that time. She had no energy and couldn’t remember things.

“She was diagnosed with liver disease after being transferred here and eventually put on the transplant waiting list. But it was a shock when we found out there was a liver for her so quickly.”

The 4,000 liver transplants have predominantly been carried out by the specialist team at University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB), but a number of operations have also been performed at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

The very first transplant in Birmingham was carried out at the old Queen Elizabeth Hospital on 19 January 1982 by pioneering former surgeon Professor Paul McMaster.

Mr Bramhall said: “He and Professor Elwyn Elias started the liver unit here and were pioneers nationally. Without them we wouldn’t be here.”

The initial operations were significantly longer than today, with the removal of the liver taking an average of eight hours, and the actual transplant taking an average of 12 hours to complete. The average operation now is around four hours, as was the case with Mrs Bromage.

Survival rates have continued to improve significantly, from around a third of patients being alive at one year in the early 1980s to more than 85 per cent now.

And the number of transplants has also been steadily growing.

Figures from Bridget Gunson at the Centre for Liver Research, who has been involved in the programme with colleague Sue Paris almost from the beginning, revealed that the 1,000 transplant milestone took 12 years to reach, in 1994, while the 2000^th followed in 2001 and the 3,000^th in 2007.

In fact, 2012 saw a record number of liver transplants carried out by the liver teams at QEHB and Birmingham Children’s Hospital. The total of 199 liver transplant operations (165 adults and 34 children) comfortably beat the previous record of 181 set in 2010.

News of the 4,000^th liver transplant at Birmingham follows the announcement that the NHS achieved the 50 per cent increase in deceased organ donation which had been set by the Organ Donation Taskforce in 2008. The number of deceased organ donors across the UK reached 1,212 in 2012-13.