The number of transplant surgeries at the University of Arizona Medical Center is down sharply.
At the height of Dr. Rainer Gruessnerโs leadership of the UA department of surgery in 2011, the department performed 100 kidney transplants in one year (including nine kidney-pancreas transplants), the United Network for Organ Sharing says. That year, 26 of the transplants were from living donors.
So far this year, the department has performed fewer than one-third of the 2011 count โ 24 kidney transplants, including three kidney-pancreas transplants. All the kidneys came from deceased donors.
Kidneys from living donors are considered optimal, and officials with the UA Medical Center say they expect to increase both the number of kidney transplants and living donors in 2015.
The number of heart, lung and liver transplants has dropped at the UA Medical Center, too. There has not been a lung transplant since 2013. And the hospital no longer performs any pediatric organ transplants. Under Gruessner, the department at one time accepted pediatric liver, kidney, heart and lung transplant patients.
Gruessner began an islet cell transplant program for people with severe pancreatitis and did transplants on more than 60 patients, but the program is now closed. An intestinal transplant program that he started also closed.
