UW Hospital set record for kidney, liver transplants in 2016

WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL | David Wahlberg

Cheryl Stedman

After Cheryl Stedman got on the waiting list for a kidney transplant at UW Hospital in 2015, she figured she’d have to wait a year or two to get one. But nine months later, in May 2016, she received a kidney.

“I’m feeling great,” said Stedman, 55, of Fort Atkinson, who has lupus, an autoimmune disease that attacked her kidneys. “I didn’t realize how bad I did feel until I started feeling better.”

Stedman was among a record 313 people who got kidney transplants at UW Hospital last year. The number of liver transplants — 105 — also set a record at the hospital, where the organ transplant program started in 1966.

Overall, UW Hospital performed 529 organ transplants last year, the most of any year since 2005, a 16 percent increase from 2015 and the fourth most among centers nationwide. Continue reading

from Donate Life Organ and Tissue Donation Blog℠ http://ift.tt/2iwHgFv