The team used an Impella, a catheter-based miniature ventricular assist device. It offered the best chance of getting rising eighth-grader Van Sung to transplant.

The Vanderbilt Transplant Center had a banner year in 2024. The number of patients whose lives were saved by Vanderbilt’s heart transplant team far surpasses any previous total by an individual transplant center. 

The recipient of the 2,000th transplant was Wes Carter, 37, a real estate agent from Pensacola, Florida, who first noticed an irregular heart rhythm in his mid-20s.

Under Bichell’s leadership, the pediatric heart transplant program has consistently had among the highest transplant volumes in the United States, ranking eighth in 2023 for pediatric heart transplant center volumes with 15 transplants performed.

Steroids are commonly given to infants during open-heart surgery to reduce inflammation, but whether the drugs significantly improve patient outcomes has not been settled — until now.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center performed more heart transplants in 2020 than any other center in the world — 124 adult hearts, 23 pediatric hearts and VUMC’s first heart-lung transplant since 2006.