Mayo Clinic in Arizona Reaches Milestone with 1,000 Kidney Transplants

Friday, March 27, 2009

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — A 53-year-old woman from Ajo, Ariz., is the 1,000th patient to receive a kidney transplant at Mayo Clinic in Arizona, a milestone for the program that opened in June 1999.

The patient's healthy kidney was thanks to the generosity of a living donor, her 31-year-old daughter, also of Ajo.

Of the 1,000 kidney transplants completed, more than half, or 556, were by living donation. In such a procedure, the donor's kidney is removed laparoscopically, resulting in shorter wait times, significantly smaller incisions, less post-operative pain and a quicker recovery period. Importantly, long-term kidney allograft survival is better with living donor transplantation.

Approximately 55 percent of Mayo's kidney transplants come from living donors, contributing to the emphasis placed on the program. Mayo Clinic in Arizona was the first medical center in Arizona to perform laparoscopic donor nephrectomy for living donor kidney transplantation. Mayo Clinic Arizona is the largest kidney transplant program in the state.

Overall survival rates of the patient and the kidney (graft) itself at one year and three years post-transplant exceed national averages. Mayo's median hospital length-of-stay remains below the regional and national levels at an average of four days for deceased donor recipients and three days for living donor kidney recipients.

According to Raymond Heilman, M.D., medical director of the Kidney Transplant Program, the 1,000th milestone and overall success of the program is the result of Mayo's integrated team of specialists who treat the individual patient, rather than a disease in isolation. "We can credit the dedication of our entire team who puts the patient above all else," Dr. Heilman added.

Mayo Clinic in Arizona is one of only 15 transplant centers in the U.S. to be recognized by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) for its high transplant volumes and successful patient outcomes.

Mayo, as a three-site organization (Arizona, Minnesota and Florida) remains the largest provider of solid organ and bone marrow transplantation in the U.S.

Currently, nearly 80,000 people in the U.S. are awaiting a kidney transplant, some 1,300 in Arizona.

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Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. As a leading academic medical center in the Southwest, Mayo Clinic focuses on providing specialty and surgical care in more than 65 disciplines at its outpatient facility in north Scottsdale and at Mayo Clinic Hospital. The 244-licensed bed hospital is located at 56th Street and Mayo Boulevard (north of Bell Road) in northeast Phoenix, and provides inpatient care to support the medical and surgical specialties of the clinic, which is located at 134th Street and Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale.

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About Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. Doctors from every medical specialty work together to care for patients, joined by common systems and a philosophy of "the needs of the patient come first." More than 3,700 physicians, scientists and researchers, and 50,100 allied health staff work at Mayo Clinic, which has campuses in Rochester, Minn; Jacksonville, Fla; and Scottsdale/Phoenix, Ariz.; and community-based providers in more than 70 locations in southern Minnesota., western Wisconsin and northeast Iowa. These locations treat more than half a million people each year. To obtain the latest news releases from Mayo Clinic, go to www.mayoclinic.org/news. For information about research and education, visit www.mayo.edu. MayoClinic.com (www.mayoclinic.com) is available as a resource for your health stories.