DCN Center News

On a sunny Wisconsin morning, Shelley Hawbecker and Liz Schumacher exchanged tears, smiles and a pair of kidney-shaped slippers, a nod to the connection the two women share through living organ donation.

Kidney transplant patients are living longer and transplanted kidneys are lasting longer thanks to advances in patient care, improved immunosuppression strategies and organ preservation techniques, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and the UW Health Transplant Center.

Dave Daniels spends 12 hours a week on his bicycle. In January 2022, he traveled to Madison to be evaluated as a living kidney donor. When he learned that his donation would not affect his ability to take cross-country rides, he made his donation in July 2022.

Jean Adams is always on the move: packing gear, checking maps and plotting her next hike. At the end of 2022, the 59-year-old retiree set the goal of hiking the entire Ice Age Trail in 2023 to show what a kidney donor can accomplish.

The UW Health Transplant Center is one of the few transplant centers in the country that has transplanted more than 12,000 kidneys.

UW Health welcomed its first patients to the new Pleasant T. Rowland Transplant Clinic at University Hospital this morning. The new 10,000-square-foot clinic serves adult patients who are being evaluated for or who have received an organ transplant, as well as those who give the gift of life through living organ donation.

Aji Djamali, MD, Maine Medical Center’s Chair of the Department of Medicine recently donated his kidney to a former patient at the UW Health Transplant Center (UW Health) in Madison, Wisconsin. Djamali, who was a professor of medicine and surgery and transplant nephrologist leading the division of nephrology at UW Health, is making his donation…

The UW Health Transplant Center performed 64 paired kidney exchanges in 2020, more than any other transplant center in the country.