Twenty-five years ago, Julie Damon’s family was preparing to say their goodbyes. Comatose and on life support at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) with liver failure, the options for the 45-year-old wife and mother of two were slipping away.

Because donor organs are scarce, understanding the mortality risk associated with heart transplantation is an important consideration when evaluating patients for transplant.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center nephrologist and Associate Professor of Medicine Dr. William Fissell IV is making major progress on a first-of-its kind device to free kidney patients from dialysis. He is building an artificial implantable kidney with microchip filters and living kidney cells that will be powered by a patient’s own heart.

When Rob Hood, M.D., began practicing cardiology 30 years ago he could not have imagined that fitness would one day be measured on a device worn around his wrist.

Lindsay Ramsey Smith, MSN, R.N., a quality consultant for the Vanderbilt Transplant Center (VTC), recently uncovered some interesting data that sparked a center-wide improvement project.

One small chemical change to an existing antibacterial drug results in a compound that is more effective against its target enzyme in tuberculosis, Vanderbilt researchers have discovered.

A protein that suppresses a key cancer pathway in the colon may be a potential biomarker for colitis-associated tumors, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center reported last month in the journal Gut.