What started as a way to gather nurse practitioners in the field of transplantation at Vanderbilt to talk about the best practices in managing patients has grown into a one-of-a-kind national conference.

Up to 60 percent of patients who receive a stem cell transplant using cells from another donor will develop post-transplant diabetes mellitus, which can increase the rate of complications and death after the procedure.

More than three decades ago, J. Harold Helderman, M.D., medical director of the Vanderbilt Transplant Center, joined a handful of colleagues from across the country to create a society for transplant physicians.

A Vanderbilt University Medical Center postdoctoral research fellow in the area of transplant outcomes research has added health literacy as a metric to an existing battery of surveys that assess patient-reported outcomes in Vanderbilt transplant patients.

Thanks to a series of altruistic donations that began in Colorado, three people who were waiting for a kidney received a life-saving transplant, including a patient at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

The Vanderbilt Transplant Center, one of the largest organ transplant programs in the Southeast, is on pace to surpass last year’s transplant totals with 254 solid organ transplantations to date.

Pediatric cardiac surgeons at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt have performed the state’s first ABO incompatible heart transplant in a 2-month-old patient.