University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) doctor Andrew Bentall has won a prestigious national award for his research into the effects of dialysis on live kidney transplant patients.

Renal Registrar Andrew Bentall received the Medawar Medal at the British Transplantation Society Annual Congress 2016 in Glasgow.

Named after the "father of transplantation", Peter Medawar, two medals are awarded each year, for the best abstract for clinical and basic science presentations to Congress.

Andrew presented the results of his research into the effects of dialysis time on the outcomes of live donor kidney transplants – which looked at almost 10,000 patients between 2001 and 2013.

Previous American research, published in 2002, had suggested that as little as six months on dialysis prior to surgery could reduce transplant survival at five years by up to 15 percent.

“Obviously that data was from the United States and from 2002, so it’s quite old,” said Andrew. “In the UK, our dialysis outcomes are better than in the US – and there’s data to support that. But no-one had shown how the better UK dialysis affected kidney transplant survival in the UK.

“Our study demonstrates, unlike the American data, that the effect of dialysis on transplant outcomes in live donor kidney transplantation is not significant until after two years of dialysis have accrued.

“It was really great to do the study, which meets a clinical need and hopefully will either support or change practice across the UK in terms of how we approach patients who have live kidney donors which are difficult to match, due to antibodies or other factors, but who need to start dialysis.

“It is great to win the prize and I’m very proud of that – it is a real privilege and the first time authors from Birmingham have been given this award – but importantly it recognises our research changes how we treat patients and improves their experiences and outcomes.”

Andrew’s co-authors in the study were consultants Mark Jesky, Richard Borrows and Simon Ball from UHB and Rachel Johnson from NHS Blood and Transplant, with whom they collaborated.