UCSF Celebrates 45th Anniversary of Transplant Service

As a world leader in the field of organ transplantation, UCSF is celebrating its 45th year of transplantation with exciting workshops, lectures and forums. “Virtually every single person in this country knows someone who has end-stage organ disease and who could benefit from transplantation,” said Nancy Ascher, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Surgery. “UCSF has premier programs in transplantation of virtually all the solid organs. Our expert teams of specialists provide outstanding patient care. They offer even the most seriously ill patients the best chance of successful outcomes, and ensure patients’ lives after transplant are as normal as possible.” This week, UCSF is hosting a number of events open to the public, with topics including nutrition, sexuality after transplant, clinical trials, hepatitis B and C awareness and screening, supporting caregivers, fitness and transplants, HIV and transplantation, and the long-term effects of taking antirejection medication, to name a few. A complete list of events can be found on the transplant surgery website. Since performing its first kidney transplant in 1964, UCSF has performed transplants in more than 10,000 patients – enough to fill every seat in Davies Symphony Hall more than three times over. This spring, UCSF performed its 500th transplant in its heart and lung program. UCSF performs more than 500 transplants per year, including 360 kidney, 160 liver, 25 heart, 20 lung, 15 pancreas and 10 islet cell transplants. In addition, UCSF’s world-renowned physicians engage in novel research that not only helps transplant patients, but also improves health outcomes for all patients. These discoveries have helped reduce the number of transplants that become necessary, and also have shed new light on the biology of diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV. The field of transplantation has evolved with astonishing speed. The first transplant in the world was performed in 1954, and as recently as the early 1980s, the one-year survival rate for liver transplant recipients was only 20 percent. Today, that survival rate has risen to 90 percent. UCSF’s transplant survival rates are comparable or superior to the average in every area, even though UCSF treats some of the most seriously ill patients. Some of UCSF’s other transplant innovations include: • Living donor program, in which healthy donors can donate one kidney or part of their liver to a transplant patient. • Paired donor exchange, in which UCSF matches a donor-recipient pair with incompatible blood types with another donor-recipient pair, enabling two recipients to receive organs with perfectly matched blood types. • Transplantation in HIV-positive patients, whereby UCSF has pioneered successful kidney, liver, pancreas and islet cell transplants. • Islet cell transplantation, in which patients receive the insulin-producing cells from a donor’s pancreas, virtually curing them of diabetes.