A multidisciplinary team from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Columbia University has demonstrated that injured human donor lungs declined for transplant can be recovered by cross-circulation between the human lung and a xenogeneic host.

The Vanderbilt Transplant Center performed 73 transplants in May, setting a Medical Center record for the most transplants in a month. Sixteen of those were heart transplants — also a monthly record — cementing VUMC’s status as the busiest heart transplant center in the country.

Rachel Forbes, MD, MBA, associate professor of Surgery, has been appointed chief of the Division of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation in the Department of Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, effective June 1.

“I was really excited to have the opportunity to do something for those who had done so much for me."

A new technique shows the potential to increase the supply of donor lungs by rehabilitating those organs previously considered too damaged for transplant.

In the first such procedures in Tennessee, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has successfully used technology to bring two donor hearts that stopped beating back to life before transplanting them into patients.

His beloved Carroll Academy Jaguars and Lady Jaguars honor him with a message on their shirts: "Donate Life."