VUMC logs record year for transplants

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.