C. Burcin Taner, M.D., transplant surgeon: The bright light for a patient who's waiting for an organ transplant is that hope that the organ will be available and they will have a successful outcome. And vast majority of patients at Mayo Clinic are able to achieve that.
Julie Heimbach, M.D., transplant surgeon: What we can offer is expertise that is unrivaled. We really have been doing transplant here since the 1960s, when it comes to kidney, and from the 1980s when it comes to liver, and heart, and lung, and we have outstanding outcomes, great transplant rates, and I think we really meet the needs of the patient in an optimal way.
Bashar Aqel, M.D., transplant hepatologist: Mayo Clinic being the largest integrated transplant center in the country, if not in the world, comes from our ability to come together, combine our knowledge, combine the expertise across many specialties in order to help as many patients as possible.
Dr. Heimbach: Across our three campuses, we actually have specialty care in transplantation. We learn from each other's best practices so that we can really deliver the care that the patient needs today and tomorrow.
Dr. Taner: We have very successful clinical programs. Using that as a baseline, we developed innovation protocols, innovation programs, to really push the limits of organ transplantation. In the last several years, a new technology, what we call a machine perfusion of organs outside of the body, has become very prominent. This gives us an opportunity to assess the organ for several hours on the machine and then try to make it work for us. How do we make that organ better while we have full control of that organ on the machine?
Dr. Aqel: 13 patients die every day who are on a transplant list before they are able to reach the point of getting a transplant. With the research we have at Mayo Clinic, we're trying to reverse that, and the way to reverse that is to create new organs, what we call De Novo organs. And our research in that field targeting 3D organ printing, as well as the utilization of xenotransplantation.
Dr. Heimbach: AI has been a game changer in things like looking at biopsies. What we found is the technology can see more than the pathologist in a more accurate way, being able to detect problems earlier than we could when we were just doing it in the standard way.
Dr. Aqel: One of the most important uses of AI that we are working on now is the appropriate match of the donor and the recipient. If you add more variables from the donor, more variables from the recipient, we get as close as possible to a perfect match so that the outcome will be better than we have.
Dr. Heimbach: The unique thing about having your transplant at Mayo Clinic is, whether you live down the street or you live across the country, or even in another part of the world, we have experience in caring for you, no matter where you are.
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