Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, The Catholic University of Korea

Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital (SSMH) is the representative medical institution of Catholic Medical Center which has the largest medical network in Korea, including 8 subsidiary hospitals and 7 research centers in Korea based on its 70 years of history. Patient-oriented, one-stop medical services are currently being provided at SSMH through a total of 25 special care centers including Catholic Comprehensive Cancer Institute, Organ Transplantation Center and Eye Center. 

Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital is the largest single building in Korea (22 upper floors and 6 underground floors) With 1,332 beds, 48 clinical departments, 800 medical doctors and 1,800 nurses, SSMH provides reliable top-quality medical services to 6,719 outpatients and about 1,166 in-patients per day. It also performs about 128 surgeries per day on an average. Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital is already well known for blood marrow transplantation. SSMH ranks number 5 for BMT in the world and it is the best institute in Asia both qualitatively and qualitatively. Currently, SSMH receives many BMT patients from other countries through the G2G cooperative contracts between South Korea and Abu-Dhabi Health Authority, Kazakhstan Health Authority, and First Central Hospital of Mongolia. 

SSMH became the first medical institute in Korea to receive ISO 9001 certification in 2005. As part of SSMH’s efforts to enhance patient safety, it achieved JCI accreditation in all areas in July 2010 and acquired the full accreditation from the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Program (AAHRPP) in June 2010. In July 2013, the hospital successfully received JCI re-accreditation with 98% completeness in the 1298 areas inspected. 

SSMH is committed to treating international patients, and provides medical services that are in line with international standards. SSMH’s International Health Care Center, first opened in 2003, provides interpretation service in 5 languages including English, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and French. The hospital designated an international-patients-only ward to lower the language barrier between patients and the medical teams, and translated medical forms in English in efforts to establish “linguistic infrastructure” in the field of medicine.   

Organ Transplantation Center

The Organ Transplantation Center at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital performs kidney, liver, small bowel, heart, lung and pancreas transplantation surgeries since it succeeded the first-ever kidney transplantation in Korea back in 1969. With more than 200 medical specialists at the Organ Transplantation Center, it plays a leading role in the field of transplantation, always keeping the Catholic philosophy in mind. The Center performs not only retransplantation, third-time re-transplantation, but also ABO incompatible transplantation. Furthermore, the Center developed a new method for transplantation for highly sensitized patients who could not have undergone a transplantation surgery because of the high level of antibody in patients. With this program, highly sensitized patients are given with antibody production suppression drugs and plasmapheresis so that high-risk patients can be treated. In 2010, the Center was designated as research-centered hospital in the field of organ transplantation and immunology to conduct research on minimizing the use of immunosuppressant and the likelihood of developing post-operative complications. As a result, the Center succeeded in kidney transplantation in which no immunosuppressant was used by inducing immune tolerance. As of 2012, the Center performed 2,300 kidney and 800 liver transplantations. The 5-year survival rate for kidney and liver transplantation patients are 92% and 85%, respectively, which are higher than the survival rates in American hospitals

The Center is a leader in the field of small bowel transplantation: A small bowel transplantation team at the Center successfully performed a surgery on an oldest female patient. Also, the Center is well capable of simultaneously transplanting two organs such as liver and kidney and the heart and kidney. As Seoul St. Mary's Hospitals is one of eight affiliated hospitals under the Catholic Medical Center, it utilizes the largest hospital network for managing deceased organ donors. Such system was highly recognized by the Korean Network for Organ Sharing, and the Center was chosen as the Best Institute for Management of Deceased Organ Donors. The Center is becoming a hope for many patients waiting for organ transplantation as the Center is most actively managing the deceased donors.

Hematology Hospital

Ever since its nation’s first allogeneic BMT in a patient with AML in 1983, Catholic BMT Center has been a leader in the field of BMT and is writing the history of BMT in Korea. Since then, the Center succeeded in performing the nation’s first autologous BMT, cord blood BMT, HLA-mismatching BMT between sibling and matched unrelated BMT. In addition, the Center adopts the most updated techniques such as low-dosage conditioning. It was upgraded into Hematology Hospital in 2018 to provide comprehensive and systematic care to patients. The Hospital designated an attending specialist for specified leukemic and blood-related diseases so that patients can receive the most accurate and appropriate treatment and care. Not only that, the Hospital closely work together with other related departments taking advantage of Seoul St Mary’s Hospitals’ multidisciplinary team approach. Such sophisticated system carefully devised for patients is found nowhere else in the world.

The Hospital exerts its efforts to the fullest to find matching donors for patients: It is the nation’s first institution to form direct network with Japan, Taiwan, the U.S., Germany and China’s bone marrow bank. It is also a registered center for International BMT Registry (CIBMTR).

The Hospital has a system in which jobs of each staff is carefully divided, and advance practice nurse, transplantation specialist nurse, case manager who manages every step of the way from outpatient clinic to hospital admission are there to care for patients. Also aseptic inpatients rooms and transplantation ward at the Hospital boast the largest space in Korea. There is also the BMT-only infusion rooms equipped with 42 beds. Post-transplantation care is also the very best: the Hospital runs BMT Clinic for more professional and systematic treatment and nursing care after patients undergo transplantations. Although the Hospital has abundant experiences with countless success cases, it is never complacent with the status quo, and it strives to best serve the patients with the safest and most updated treatment method. Such efforts brought forth the 5,000th cases of BMT in September, 2013, something that’s never seen achieved in Korea nor in Asia. In 2012 alone, the Hospital performed 429 cases of BMT, which puts the Hospital as one of the best Hematology Hospital in the world both qualitatively and quantitatively. 

Comprehensive Cancer Institute

Comprehensive Cancer Institute (CCI), established in 2009, has been changing the paradigm of diagnosis and treatment of patients with various malignant disorders based upon multi-disciplinary team (MDT) approach through close collaboration among various disciplines, with the aim of obtaining optimal therapeutic outcomes for cancer patients and researches. CCI is composed of Division of Cancer Diagnosis/Treatment and Division of Cancer Research. The Division of Cancer Diagnosis/Treatment is composed of Solid Tumor Center.

In the Solid Tumor Center, there are 12 disease-oriented MDTs; Gastric Cancer Center, Colorectal Cancer Center, Lung Cancer Center, Hepato-pancreatico-biliary Cancer Center, Gynecologic Cancer Center, Breast Cancer Center, Thyroid Cancer Team, Urologic Cancer Team, CNS Tumor Team, Head and Neck Cancer Team, Bone & Soft Tissue Sarcoma Team, etc. In particular, one-stop service for the diagnosis and timely initiation of cancer therapy including surgery are the principles for cancer patient’s management. 

Eye Center

International Services