The Division of Transplantation cares for patients with end-stage organ failure from across Alabama and the Southeast, guiding them from evaluation to lifelong post-transplant follow-up. Since 1968, UAB's transplant services have performed more than 17,000 organ transplants with more than 500 organs each year, which ranks the program among the nation's leaders in the number of transplants performed and patient outcomes.
Transplant surgeons work alongside hepatologists, nephrologists, endocrinologists, transplant infectious disease specialists, pharmacists, coordinators and social workers through the UAB Comprehensive Transplant Institute, so that donor evaluation, recipient optimization and long-term graft surveillance are managed by a coordinated team. The division also maintains an active laboratory and clinical research portfolio in organ preservation, transplant immunology and access to transplantation.
The division is organized into the following programs:
- Kidney Transplantation: Living and deceased donor transplantation, including paired kidney exchange, ABO-incompatible and highly sensitized recipients. Where appropriate, we perform minimally invasive and robotic donor and recipient surgeries..
- Liver Transplantation: Living and deceased donor transplantation for cirrhosis, acute liver failure, select liver cancersand metabolic liver disease, supported by dedicated hepatology and critical care teams.
- Pancreas Transplantation: Combine kidney-pancreas and solitary pancreas transplantation for patients with diabetes.
- Transplantation Oncology: Transplantation as cancer therapy, including hepatocellular carcinoma, cholangiocarcinoma and selected patients with unresectable colorectal liver metastases, in coordination with medical and radiation oncology.
- Hepatobiliary Surgery: Hepatobiliary expertise providing multidisciplinary management for the full spectrum of benign and malignant liver and biliary tract disease. Our team specializes in everything from tumor liver surgery, advanced bile duct reconstructions and lifesaving liver operations for complex traumatic injuries.
- Pediatric Liver Transplantation: In partnership with Children's of Alabama, UAB surgeons care for infants and children with biliary atresia, metabolic liver disease, acute liver failure and hepatic tumors. The program performs split (technical variant) liver transplantation dividing a single deceased-donor liver between an adult and a child to expand the pool of size-matched grafts and shorten time to transplant for children under two years of age.
- Pediatric Kidney Transplantation: Our Pediatric Renal Transplant Program is housed at the Children’s of Alabama Hospital. The program is focused on bringing end-stage renal alternatives to children with a variety of diseases such as Renal Dysplasia, Polycystic Kidney Disease, Wilm’s Tumor, as well as Congenital and Genetic Anomalies.
- Organ Perfusion: Application of perfusion technologies for the assessment and preservation of organs to increase utilization, expand access to transplantation, and improve recipient outcomes.
- Dialysis Access: Our team provides comprehensive dialysis access care, including evaluation, creation, maintenance and revision of access ranging from fistulas and grafts to peritoneal dialysis catheters.