Mayo Clinic Transplant Center in Minnesota

Transplant for Children

Care of children has always been an important part of Mayo Clinic. Every new medical treatment has been applied to the goal of improving the health of our pediatric patients, including organ and tissue transplantation.

• When Mayo's kidney transplant program was started in 1963, one patient transplanted that year was a 12-year-old boy who received a kidney from his mother.
• When Mayo's liver transplant program was started in 1985, one patient transplanted that year was an 8-year-old girl.
• In 1991 during the early years of Mayo's heart transplant program, a 10-year-old boy with sudden heart failure was saved by a heart transplant.
• Mayo Clinic began doing pediatric bone marrow transplant (BMT or blood and marrow transplant) in 1995. We now do 25 transplants per year, with two-thirds of those transplants as autologous transplants.

These examples help to indicate the commitment of all Mayo transplant efforts to serve the special needs of children. Hundreds of children have been transplanted in Rochester, and the care of children is an integral part of every transplant program at Mayo Clinic.

The Mary Eugenio Litta Children's Hospital is where pediatric transplant patients receive their hospital care.

Five transplant programs have a special team for the care of children:

• Bone Marrow Transplant Program
• Heart Transplant Program
• Kidney Transplant Program
• Liver Transplant Program
• Lung Transplant Program