U.S. hospitals performed 7,127 adult liver transplants in 2015—the first time surgeons more than 7,000 such surgeries have been performed in a year, according to a new annual data report published last month in the American Journal of Transplantation.
To celebrate the accomplishment, health care advocates have put together a list of the 10 hospitals that performed the most liver transplants during this record-breaking year, Becker’s Hospital Review reports.
To compile the list, researchers culled data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, or SRTR, which analyzes data from the U.S. Organ Procurement Transplant Network on every solid organ transplant program and organization in the United States.
New Orleans’s Ochsner Foundation Hospital came in first place, with 213 transplants in 2015. University of California San Francisco Medical Center came in second place, with 159 transplants. Baltimore’s University of Maryland Medical System came in third, with surgeons there transplanting 153 livers.
In the fourth through 10th spots were: Vanderbilt University Medical Center/Nashville VA Medical Center (149), Mayo Clinic Florida in Jacksonville (147), Emory University Hospital in Atlanta (146), Indiana University Health in Indianapolis (146), University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center (146), Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (142) and University of Alabama Hospital in Birmingham (140).
In the original AJT report, study authors noted that the increase in adult liver transplants for most centers was attributable to both more deceased donors and living donors entering into the transplant system across the country. Researchers also noted that the number of additions to the waiting list for liver transplants have also dropped for the first time in years, most notably among patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV), likely as a result of new antiviral drugs for the virus.
The 2015 report also noted reductions in three key transplant categories: median wait times, waiting list mortality and total number of candidates on the liver transplant waiting list at the end of the year.
Although the increase in the number of liver transplants is encouraging, liver experts also say the U.S. organ shortage remains severe. According to the analysis, in 2015, 1,673 people waiting for livers died without undergoing a transplant and another 1,227 were removed from the waiting list for being too sick to undergo the lifesaving surgery.
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