Why this project matters:
Healthcare has a significant environmental impact in the Netherlands, the sector accounts for approximately 7% of total carbon emissions and 13% of material use. Kidney transplantation is a resource-intensive care pathway, yet its full environmental footprint remains largely uncharacterised. The surgical phase has already been audited; this project will complete the picture by focusing on the pre- and post-surgery phases.
Background
An important theme within UMC Utrecht is the transition towards a circular safe hospital by developing and implementing systemic, transdisciplinary circular strategies and scalable solutions to minimise the ecological footprint of healthcare, in line with the Green Deal Sustainable Healthcare.
The healthcare sector is one of the most carbon-intensive sectors. The Dutch government has called for fully circular healthcare by 2050. Clinical care pathways are optimised for quality, but the procedures and devices used often require substantial resources energy, water, plastics, and pharmaceuticals with considerable associated waste. Kidney transplantation offers long-term environmental benefits over dialysis, but the transplantation pathway itself is resource intensive. An LCA of the surgical phase has already been completed; this project will extend that work to the pre- and post-surgical phases to generate the first complete pathway-level environmental assessment of kidney transplantation at UMC Utrecht.
About the project
You will:
- Map out the pre- and post-surgery patient pathways in kidney transplantation
- Perform a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to assess environmental impacts across both phases
- Integrate findings with the existing surgery audit to produce a complete pathway LCA
- Identify key hotspots and compare current practices with more sustainable alternatives
- Support publication of the results (possibly as co-author)
You will work with real-world clinical data from UMC Utrecht and contribute to ongoing research towards more sustainable kidney transplantation care.
Phase 1: Pre-Surgery Audit
- Outpatient consultations and multidisciplinary team meetings
- Laboratory diagnostics and immunological workup (HLA typing, crossmatch)
- Imaging: ultrasound, CT, MRI
- Patient preparation: medications, IV lines, sterile disposables
Phase 2: Post-Surgery Audit
- Inpatient recovery: ward resources, energy, disposables
- Immunosuppressive therapy: drug footprint, packaging, disposal
- Post-discharge follow-up: outpatient visits, repeat diagnostics
Long-term monitoring and complication management
Literature
- Barraclough, K.A., Agar, J.W.M. Green nephrology. Nat Rev Nephrol 16, 257-268 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-019-0245-1
- Vanholder, R. et al. The European Green Deal and nephrology: a call for action by the European Kidney Health Alliance. Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/ndt/gfac160
- Thiel, C.L. et al. Environmental impacts of surgical procedures: life cycle assessment of hysterectomy in the United States. Environ Sci Technol, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1021/es504719g
- Watts, N. et al. The 2020 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. Lancet, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32290-X
Location
UMC Utrecht
Contact person
Karin Gerritsen, internist-nephrologist, associate professor: K.G.F.Gerritsen@umcutrecht.nl