Celebrating 46 years of transplant success, University of Minnesota Medical Center has more than 7,000 kidney transplants to our credit. Our program is one of the two largest and oldest kidney transplant programs in the world. We performed the world’s first kidney-pancreas transplant in 1966.

We utilize more living donors than any other kidney transplant program in the world. In April 2009, we performed our 50th non-directed kidney donor transplant. A non-directed donor is someone who decides they want to donate their kidney to anyone who might need it. Click the link to learn more about our Living Kidney Donor Program.

Kidney transplantation is the treatment of choice for patients with end-stage kidney disease. Compared to dialysis, a transplant provides increased longevity and a markedly better quality of life. More transplant patients than patients on dialysis are able to return to an active lifestyle in their community, school, or the workforce. In some situations, the improvement in survival with transplantation vs. dialysis is dramatic. This is true, for example, in patients with diabetes. In others, there are specific reasons why a transplant is preferred over dialysis -- such as improved growth in children.

The first successful kidney transplant was done between identical twins in 1954. It was almost a decade later before development of immunosuppressive drugs allowed non-twin transplants. Since then, there has been incremental improvement in both patient survival and transplant graft survival.  Currently, one-year patient and graft survival rates are more than 90%. Click on the link for more information on kidney transplant success rates at University of Minnesota Medical Center.