A World Leader in Kidney Transplants

The Transplant Center--Kidney Transplants

University of Minnesota Physicians perform more than 200 kidney transplants each year at University of Minnesota Medical Center. The program began in 1963 at the University of Minnesota, and over 6,000 have been performed since. Our current one-year patient and graft survival rate is greater than 95 percent.

Living Donors

Our transplant program has worked with more living donors — more than 3,500 (related or unrelated) — than any other. The first transplant surgery here was a kidney transplant between identical twins who went on to live normal lives well into their senior years.

A kidney transplant is the best option for several conditions, and recipients of a living donor kidney have better long-term graft survival than those who receive kidneys from deceased donors. Because the average wait for a deceased-donor kidney is approaching five years, we believe living donors provide recipients the best opportunity for a speedy and successful transplant.

Expanding Research Expertise

The University of Minnesota has a long history of research devoted to improving results for patients. The Transplant Center takes pride in making kidney transplants available to seniors, to patients with difficult diseases such as oxalosis, and to those patients who do not consider dialysis an option.

A significant number of patients have been over age 60. Of our patients, 40 percent have end-stage renal disease resulting from diabetes mellitus. Many of our patients decide to have transplants before total end-stage kidney failure in order to avoid dialysis. Recipients who know they need a transplant and can have one before end-stage renal disease sets in have better long-term graft survival than patients transplanted after starting dialysis.

The data below is taken from Mortality in Patients on Dialysis and Transplant Recipients, Robert A. Wolfe, Ph.D., Valarie B. Ashby, M.A., Edgar L. Milford, M.D., et. al., New England Journal of Medicine, Dec. 2, 1999, Vol. 341, No. 23 pp. 1725-1730.

Group Projected Years of Life Projected Years of Life

Without Transplantation With Transplantation

All recipients of first

deceased-donor transplant 10 20

Age

0-19 years 26 39

20-39 years 14 31

40-59 years 11 22

60-74 years 6 10

Sex

Male 10 19

Female 11 23

Race

Native American 9 14

Asian 15 23

Black 13 19

White 9 19

Cause of ESRD

Diabetes 8 19

Glomerulonephritis 11 18

Other 12 20

Age and diabetes status

20-39 yr, no diabetes 20 31

20-39 yr, diabetes 8 25

40-59 yr, no diabetes 12 19

40-59 yr, diabetes 8 22

60-74 yr, no diabetes 7 12

60-74 yr, diabetes 5 8

Pediatric Kidney Transplant

Our pediatric kidney transplant program is among the three largest in the world. We specialize in infants and small children. More than 600 infants and children, many less than a year old, have received the gift of life through transplantation at University of Minnesota Medical Center. We have performed more kidney transplants with greater success in this special group than any other program in the world:

• our smallest pediatric kidney transplant recipient weighed 6kg
• our youngest pediatric kidney transplant recipient was 2 months old
• more infant transplants than any other U.S. program

Pushing the Limits

Our specialty services also allow us to perform transplants under extenuating circumstances:

• in the face of “antibodies” that may otherwise prevent a patient from receiving a kidney from a donor
• when a potential donor is not of the correct blood type
• when a patient requires transplant with a liver, pancreas, or heart at the same time (We conducted the first kidney/pancreas transplant in the world in 1966)
• for a patient who has undergone previous kidney transplant surgeries
• for a patient referred from around the world who will depend on continued collaborative care expertise from The Transplant Center