The Vanderbilt Transplant Center (VTC) established a new record in calendar year 2023 for total solid organ transplants, performing 739 lifesaving procedures among its adult and pediatric organ transplant programs.
The 2023 total surpasses VTC’s previous record of 645 transplants in 2021. In 2023, VTC’s lung transplant team accomplished two notable firsts — its first combined lung-kidney transplant and first combined lung-liver transplant.
Other records were set in the comprehensive adult and pediatric kidney transplant program (326 kidneys and eight kidney-pancreas procedures) the comprehensive adult and pediatric liver transplant program (169 livers), and the lung transplant program (95 lungs, including two heart-lung procedures.)
In the Adult Transplant program, teams performed 319 kidney transplants (including eight kidney-pancreas procedures), 128 heart transplants (including two heart-lung procedures), 152 liver transplants, and 95 lung transplants (including two heart-lung procedures.)
Pediatric transplant teams with Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt performed 17 liver transplants, 15 heart transplants and 14 kidney transplants.
By the end of 2023, VUMC had exceeded 12,000 total transplants of all organs, starting with its first kidney transplant in 1962. It takes a highly specialized, multidisciplinary team of about 150 people to work on a single transplant. The transplant teams include physicians in each organ specialty, surgeons, anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists, intensivists, nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, social workers, financial coordinators, nutritionists, organ procurement coordinators, preservationists, perfusionists and operating room staff, among others.
