Tampa General Hospital Organ Donations Set Record

On Dec. 30, 2011, a Pasco man received a lung at Tampa General Hospital (TGH), making it the 500th organ transplant performed there, and TGH the fourth highest for volume transplantation out of 258 centers throughout the nation for 2011.

The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) recently announced national transplantation figures, which also show that that each of TGH’s transplant programs -- heart, liver, lung, kidney/pancreas, and kidney -- ranked among the country’s 10 busiest centers last year.

Angie Korsun, administrator for the Transplant and Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) division at TGH, credits the team effort put forth by the staff more than anything else. "I don’t know if you can say it was a technological innovation that contributed to our success. I think it’s more a matter of the fact that everyone -- from the physicians who evaluate the patients who need a transplant to the surgeons who are going to evaluate the organs and bring them back to the operating room staff, to the ICU nurses -- it's truly a team effort. A lot of hardworking, talented people who take a great deal of pride in what they do.

"It's also due in large part to the fact that we have a great organ procurement entity in our backyard," says Korsun. "That gives us an advantage. The work done through Lifelink allows us to perform quicker surgery and provide better post op monitoring."

Other OPTN statistics show that:

TGH's most significant volume increase was for liver transplants, which jumped from 91 transplants in 2010 to 126 in 2011, making its liver transplant program the ninth busiest among the country’s 131 liver transplant programs.
       
TGH's  heart transplant program maintained its 2010 ranking as the nation’s fifth busiest among the 126 centers in the country with 58 transplants performed in 2011.    

TGH’s kidney transplant program ranked among the top 10 in 2011 with 240 transplants.

TGH staff performed 20 kidney-pancreas transplants in 2011, making it the sixth busiest kidney-pancreas program.
 
The lung transplant program at TGH was the eighth busiest among the 63 centers performing lung transplants in the country, with 56 performed in 2011.

Writer: Missy Kavanaugh
Source: Angie Korsun, Tampa General Hospital