Mayo Clinic In Florida Completes 2000th Liver Transplant

Jacksonville, Fla: Mayo Clinic has announced that the Gary and Dianne McCalla Transplant Center at its Florida campus has just completed its 2000th liver transplant. The facility began doing liver transplants in 1998 and over the last five years has been the highest volume liver transplant center in the Southeast. It also is among the top five in the United States.

Mayo Clinic in Florida's liver transplant program has reported some of the highest volumes, lowest median wait times, and highest survival rates in the country. According to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, the average median wait time for a liver at Mayo Clinic in Florida is one month, compared to a 16.1 month national average. Survival rates are 98.56 percent (1 month), 93.26 percent (one year) and 83.01 percent (three years) at Mayo Clinic in Florida versus a national average of 96.47 percent (one month), 87.68 percent (one year) and 79.45 percent (three years).

Mayo Clinic in Florida has performed 3,185 organ transplants since its transplant center opened in 1998, including liver, heart, lung, kidney and pancreas transplantations as well as multi-organ procedures. So far this year, Mayo Clinic's Florida transplant center has performed 151 liver transplants.

"This is a significant milestone in the history of our transplant center here in Florida," said Thomas Gonwa, M.D., chair of the Department of Transplantation at Mayo Clinic in Florida. "More important than the number, however, is how we apply the expertise and knowledge garnered from performing 2,000 liver transplants over the past decade into our practice. We are proud that this vast experience has enabled us to continually evolve our practice and successfully prolong the lives of some of most seriously ill patients out there — often the ones that other transplant centers have turned away. We offer those people, in particular, a chance at life that might not otherwise be available to them."

Contact: Paul Scotti
904-953-2299 (days)
904-953-2000(evenings)
scotti.paul@mayo.edu