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VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System performs bloodless stem cell transplant, giving Marine Corps Veteran new hope.

After battling heart failure and a stroke, one Veteran received a heart transplant at the Michael E. DeBakey VA.

Army Veteran Gregory Zielsdorf recounts his experience on the kidney donor list and through the transplant surgery.

A heart transplant, a multi-organ kidney/liver transplant, two kidney transplants and two liver transplants… in four days.

Air Force Veteran Walter Pinkney is the recipient of a simultaneous heart and kidney transplant, a groundbreaking multi-organ transplant surgery.

Veteran Allan Howell was given 30 days to live. After liver transplant surgery, he joined a gym and now lives his best life.

VA-funded research starting in the 1990s helped uncover knowledge that proved to be key—along with findings by many other groups—to establishing the technique of transplanting a pig’s heart into a person. The researcher leading this work at VA was Dr. Richard Pierson, a specialist in thoracic and cardiac surgery who is now with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University.

Projected to perform eight to 10 transplants in the first year, the Hines VA reached 50 transplants within the first 16 months of the program.

A recent VA Houston study published in Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics found that hepatitis C positive organs are a safe and effective option for most transplant candidates. Newer antiviral drugs have made it possible for patients to be successfully treated for hepatitis C infections transmitted via organ transplant.

Study identified Veterans who had kidney transplants between 2008 and 2016 and were enrolled in VA and Medicare at the time of their transplant…and had their choice of where to receive transplant care.

Critically ill Veteran needed a triple organ transplant – a procedure so rare U.S. doctors had performed just 24 in the last 30 years. Two transplant requests were denied so he needed a miracle.

Dr. Christie Thomas, a nephrologist at the University of Iowa and the Iowa City VA Healthcare System, discusses his favorite organ, the kidney.