Kidney Transplantation Program

As there appears to be the greatest need for kidneys, our services focus primarily on kidney transplants, although other organs remain an option. With more than 10,000 vascular access procedures completed by our ethnically diverse multi-disciplinary team of surgeons, nephrologists, nurses, coordinators, social workers and histocompatibilty experts for children and adults, our transplant services are characterized by innovation and positive outcomes:

• First to develop the concept of diversion of pancreatic juice into the urinary tract;
• Since 1970, educated the public and professionals regarding ‘brain death," then a new concept; involved in the first recognition of brain death by the New York State courts and mounted a grass roots effort to obtain a legislative definition of it;
• First to initiate a system for sharing kidneys in our regions;
• First to transplant machine-preserved kidneys in New York;
• Participated in numerous single and multi-center studies of new immunosuppressive drugs;
• Our tissue typing laboratory has evaluated new techniques in tissue typing.

One year patient survival at Montefiore Medical Center is among the best in the region (96 percent), and the 1992 and 1994 Center Specific reports lists Montefiore as one of the very few U.S. centers with a risk-adjusted survival rate significantly above that expected.

Our current transplant rate is approximately two live-donor transplants per week in addition to a large volume of cadaver kidneys. Our pediatric renal replacement program is world-renowned, and we have done more pediatric transplants than many pediatric hospitals. The patient and graft survival rates in the pediatric population are superior to the national average. In addition, transplantation of the elderly is among our special interests.