Washington University lung transplant surgeons reached a milestone January 21, 2009 when they performed the 1,000th adult lung transplant at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Although the transplant milestone is significant, the staff did not spend too much time celebrating. Only hours later, they performed the 1,001st transplant. With almost 400 additional lung transplants performed at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, the Washington University Medical Center is the busiest lung transplant program in the United States.
Surgical teams successfully completed the first six-way, multihospital, domino kidney transplant on February 14.
The procedure, kidney paired donation, takes a group of incompatible donor-recipient pairs and matches them with other pairs in a similar predicament. By exchanging kidneys between the pairs, it is possible to give each recipient a compatible kidney. In the so-called domino swap, 12 surgeries were done simultaneously at three hospitals across the country, swapping all six kidneys in less than 12 hours.
Also performed was the first matched paired kidney transplant in St. Louis on February 24. In the groundbreaking transplant, two patients received kidneys from donors whom they had not known previously. The transplant involved four simultaneous surgeries done in four operating rooms at the hospital.