Being a part of an innovative and skilled team makes a difference, and the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute is proof. Our transplant staff offers hope to adult and pediatric patients with conditions such as kidney failure, end-stage liver disease and diabetes.

As leaders in their fields, the transplant program medical staff offers cutting edge advances in kidney, liver and pancreas solid organ transplants. On-staff physicians are members of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center faculty, creating a mutually beneficial relationship between academics and practical medicine.

Our program is one of only ten in the country to be named an Islet Cell Resource Center by the National Institutes of Health. This is only one of the many research initiatives in which the medical staff participates.

As such, we are involved in the transplantation of islet cells to successfully restore insulin production in the pancreas for insulin-dependent diabetics. This promising research eventually will allow many more patients to be treated in the near future.

The transplant program, working with Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center, has made innovative surgical advances to benefit pediatric patients. Several techniques have been adopted to provide suitable sized organs for children who require liver transplantation.

Le Bonheur is one of only a few pediatric transplant centers with the surgical expertise required to perform these new techniques:

• Reduced-size: A portion of a wholly donated adult organ liver is removed and transplanted into a child.
• Living-related: A living adult, usually a parent, donates part of his or her liver to the child. The transplant surgeons at Le Bonheur have extensive experience with living-related liver transplants.
• Split-liver: A wholly donated adult liver is divided into two unequal sized organs. The smaller part is placed into a small child while the remainder is transplanted into a large child or small adult.