Solid organ transplantation at Yale-New Haven Transplantation Center: Global Expertise

The evolution of solid organ transplantation is an extraordinary success story. What was science fiction just a few generations ago is now a worldwide common practice. In the United States alone, over 150,000 people are living healthy lives with a functioning, transplanted organ and nearly 30,000 are performed each year in over 150 medical centers. Integral to the success and ongoing development of organ transplantation are the fields of surgery, medicine, immunology, pharmacology, anesthesiology and molecular cell biology.

Nowhere is this combination of medical disciplines and expertise on display more so than at the Yale-New Haven Transplantation Center (YNHTC). As we adhere to the international scientific guidelines of organ transplantation and patient care, it is the multinational experience of the transplant team at YNHTC and continuous patient satisfaction that gives this center its preeminent status. Experience, dedication, efficiency and ongoing research are the four cornerstones of success practiced by the diverse team of multi-specialty experts.

Leading this team and directing the YNHTC is Sukru Emre, MD, FACS, one of the world’s most experienced liver surgeons. Dr. Emre, who made the liver transplant program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York one of the best in the nation, arrived at Yale-New Haven in 2007 as the new director of the Yale-New Haven Transplantation Center, and section chief of organ transplantation and immunology in the department of surgery at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Emre trained in hepatobiliary surgery in his native country of Turkey at the University of Istanbul. He has performed more than 1,500 liver transplants, and his breadth of experience and commitment to patient care, both in the US and abroad, is shared by the YNHTC’s nationally respected team of surgeons.

Sanjay Kulkarni, MD, director of the kidney and pancreas transplant program, has had extensive training in transplant research and multi-organ transplant surgery at the University of Chicago with additional living donor liver transplantation experience at the renowned University of Essen in Germany.

Pramod K. Mistry, MD, PhD, FRCP, chief of pediatric liver diseases and gastroenterology at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital, is internationally recognized for his expertise in pulmonary hypertension and Gaucher’s disease. He completed his residency at Royal Free Hospital in London and his fellowship at Addenbrook’s Hospital in Cambridge, England.

Mario Strazzabosco, MD, PhD, director of transplant hepatology, served as director of the Ospedali Riuniti di Bergamo liver transplant center, Italy’s third-largest liver program before arriving at YNHTC in 2005.

Michael Schilsky, MD, medical director of transplant hepatology served as the medical director at the center for liver disease and transplantation at New York Presbyterian Hospital where he developed a comprehensive program for the care and evaluation of liver transplant patients prior to coming to YNHTC.

Cary Caldwell, MD, completed his fellowship in gastroenterology at the University of Michigan Medical Center and is a private GI practitioner with clinical expertise in liver disease.

Tamar Taddei, MD, served her fellowship in gastroenterology/hepatology at Yale School of Medicine. Her clinical interests include inherited metabolic liver diseases and benign and malignant neoplasms of the liver.

Richard Formica Jr., MD, is the director of transplant nephrology and outpatient transplantation service and serves as the primary United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) physician for the kidney and pancreas transplantation service, and primary renal consultant for the liver transplantation service. He served his fellowship in nephrology at Yale School of Medicine; his clinical activity is entirely focused on the care of patients with kidney and pancreas transplants.

Antonio Arvelakis, MD, the latest addition to the surgical team, trained in Greece and at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Margaret Bia, MD, has over 25 years of experience in transplant medicine. Dr. Bia completed her fellowship in nephrology at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale School of Medicine, where she currently serves as a professor of medicine.

The Yale-New Haven Transplantation Center has strong connections to the division of digestive diseases. This division, founded in 1950, is one of the oldest and most respected in the country, and trains roughly 18 new gastroenterologists/hepatologists in any given year. James Boyer, Guadalupe Garcia-Tsao, Roberto Groszmann and Michael Nathanson have written many of the guidelines that are now in use by thousands of practicing hepatologists worldwide.

Each esteemed member of the transplant team was initially attracted to the program because of Yale-New Haven Hospital’s history of excellence in patient care and as a top teaching institution. Yale-New Haven Hospital is continuously ranked among the top 15 teaching hospitals in the nation, and the Yale School of Medicine is one of the top research universities in the world.

Our expertise in transplantation goes beyond the liver to include the heart, pancreas, kidney and bone marrow. All of the current scientific literature in the surgical sciences states that the success of a procedure depends most on the number of cases performed by an individual surgeon. At Yale-New Haven, transplants are performed on a daily basis. This is perhaps the primary reason why patients from all over the region are referred to us for their care.

The Yale-New Haven Transplantation Center is comprised of an experienced team of specialists that include pathologists, diagnostic and interventional radiologists, cardiologists, infectious disease experts, nutritionists and more, who are vital to the care of the transplant patient. For every difficult clinical question and unusual patient disease, there is an expert at YNHTC and a cadre of colleagues working to find the answers. Even in this era of technology and advances in diagnostics and therapeutics, we constantly remind ourselves that transplant medicine is as much an art as it is a science. At YNHTC, we understand that the art of establishing a trusting relationship with a patient and his or her family is paramount to a successful treatment outcome.

Although our backgrounds are diverse, our focus is not. We invite you to meet with the members of our transplant team and see for yourself.