A new regeneration technique could potentionally add to a limited supply of donor organs for an increasing population with end-stage lung disease.

Patients with a form of congenital heart disease — having only one ventricle (pumping chamber) — are now living longer lives due to the successful surgical and medical treatments they receive as children.

Tim Lowell of Hernando, Mississippi, received the first total artificial heart in the state of Tennessee when the cardiac surgery team at Vanderbilt Health placed the device in his chest on Sept. 26, 2018. The mechanical heart kept him alive for nearly three months until a matching human donor heart became available and he was transplanted on Dec. 16, 2018, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Past and present members of the Vanderbilt Transplant Center, guests and patients attended a celebration of VUMC’s 500th lung transplant at the Student Life Center Feb. 5.

Alabama resident Andy Bolden spent much of the last five years on the couch, having difficulty doing something many people take for granted — breathing.

Matthew Bacchetta, MD, MBA, MA, has joined the Department of Thoracic Surgery as an associate professor and the surgical director of a new respiratory institute at Vanderbilt University Medical Center that will be launched soon.