VUMC logs record year for transplants
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It takes about 150 people to work on a single organ transplant, and the Vanderbilt Transplant Center performed a record number in fiscal year 2024.
By the numbers: From July 2023 through June 2024, the adult and pediatric programs completed 809 solid organ transplants.
- The adult program performed:
- 333 kidney transplants
- 180 liver transplants
- 150 heart transplants
- 90 lung transplants
- 4 kidney/pancreas transplants
- 3 heart/lung transplants
- The pediatric program performed:
- 26 liver transplants
- 14 kidney transplants
- 9 heart transplants
The big picture: "While the numbers are impressive, it is so important not to lose sight of the fact that each one of those transplants is potentially a life saved and/or improved dramatically," said Joseph Magliocca, professor of surgery and director of the Vanderbilt Transplant Center.
How it works: Transplant teams include physicians and surgeons, anesthesiologists, pharmacists, social workers, nutritionists and more.
Zoom in: In May, a Vanderbilt organ recovery team took a 5,704 nautical-mile trip to Alaska to recover a donor heart.
- In that case, the team was able to look for a heart from farther away because of new technologies that make it possible to preserve organs for longer — a period called ischemic time.
- A transplant's typical ischemic time is four to six hours, but this organ was preserved for 10 hours and 22 minutes before the transplant.
Zoom out: Since its first kidney transplant in 1962, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has performed over 13,000 transplants among all organs.