The new policy changed liver allocations from a regional service area to an “acuity circles” system that assigns donor livers as far as 500 nautical miles away based on the acuity of recipients.

Connie Rankin of Memphis, Tennessee, received Vanderbilt's first combined lung and liver transplant, which involved dozens of specialists, including transplant teams for both organs.

The number of potential organ donors in the United States could solve the shortage for most organs, but many organs are not recovered due to performance variations in the opaque organ procurement organization process, according to a just-published study with first and corresponding authors from Vanderbilt.

A group of doctors from Ukraine recently visited Vanderbilt to observe transplants and protocols as part of an initiative to establish a lung transplant program and improve heart transplantation in the war-torn country.

This May, the Vanderbilt Transplant Center is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its first liver transplant.