The heart transplant program at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt experienced back-to-back record years for the number of heart transplants performed.

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.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has performed the world’s first dual heart-lung transplant of a COVID-19 patient.

The Vanderbilt Transplant Center’s cardiac surgeons transplanted four hearts in one 48-hour stretch in August, thanks to VUMC’s perfusion and organ recovery teams traveling more than 4,000 miles across the country to obtain the donor organs.

For years, doctors told Piper Davis it was impossible to have a heart transplant. She was born with just one ventricle, or pumping chamber, instead of two. A generation ago, such patients didn’t survive into adulthood.

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.

Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt is one of the original pediatric heart transplant programs in the country, and after 30 years, the program continues to rank among the best.