In record-setting year, Miami organ transplant hub performed most transplants in U.S.
Camila Correa weighed just six pounds when she received her first liver transplant as a 1-year-old in 2011 at Holtz Children’s Hospital in Miami. Over the next eight years, Camila would shuttle in and out of hospitals, receiving another liver transplant in the process, only to face more setbacks.
Last year, doctors at the Miami Transplant Institute — operated jointly between Jackson Health System and UHealth, the University of Miami health system — found during an attempted third transplant that Camila’s organs had “become connected like spaghetti, and they could not continue the operation as planned,” Jackson Memorial Hospital officials said.
That meant Camila, now 9, needed a multi-organ procedure: a new liver, stomach, pancreas and intestines. The surgery was successfully performed on Oct. 25, though Camila remained in the pediatric intensive care unit for 45 more days due to complications. She was finally discharged from the hospital on Christmas Eve.
“When they say there are miracles at Jackson, it’s true,” Emilia Correa, her mother, said at a press conference Thursday at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Diagnostic Treatment Center. “This is our miracle.”
Camila’s multi-organ transplant was one of 747 procedures performed at the Miami Transplant Institute last year, more than any other transplant center in the U.S. and a record for most transplants performed in a year by any center since the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network — a panel of medical professionals, transplant recipients and donor families that develop national organ transplantation policy — started tracking the procedures.
Luke Preczewski, vice president for transplant at Jackson Health, said the record-setting year was driven mostly by the institute’s kidney program, the largest in the country, with 502 transplants completed last year.
“Our team has found new ways to use kidneys that have previously been unused,” Preczewski said. “That’s made the biggest difference.”
The transplant institute’s intestines, liver, pancreas and combined kidney/pancreas programs also ranked among the top 10 in their respective areas.
Carlos A. Migoya, president and CEO of Jackson Health System, celebrated the transplant institute’s 50th anniversary at the press conference, sharing his own personal connection to the center: Migoya’s mother donated a kidney to his aunt in 1982, when the program was in its 12th year, he said.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t miss my mother,” Migoya said. “There’s also not a day that goes by where I’m not proud of her for giving my aunt the miracle of a transplant.”
In Florida, Miami’s center took the top spot trailed by Tampa General Hospital, which performed 584 transplants, and Mayo Clinic Florida, which performed 446, according to data kept by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
Last year was the ninth consecutive record-breaking year for organ transplants in the U.S. with about 11,900 people donating organs — a nearly 11% increase from 2018 — according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.
Rodrigo Vianna, a UHealth transplant surgeon and director of the program, emphasized the importance of organ donors. “Without them, we wouldn’t be here,” he said.
The doctor said that the partnership between Jackson Health and UM involves teams of medical professionals all working together to make the organ transplants happen.
“When we get organs, a team of people fly across the country, sometimes in small planes and bad weather,” Vianna said. “Sometimes the plane is shaking, and they’re thinking, ‘Oh god, maybe I’m the next donor.’ “
Vianna and Preczewski, the vice president for transplant, said that the center’s mission is to try to make sure that no one dies on the waiting list.
At the end of the press conference, Camila stood at the podium with her parents taking questions. She tapped the microphone once, then thanked the nurses and doctors.
“Thank you for my life,” Camila said.
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This story was originally published January 16, 2020 at 11:39 AM.
