Today’s reception to recognize trailblazing transplant programs

Program facts In 1970, Carol Vogl became the first patient to receive a kidney transplant here, which was also the first ever in the state of Nebraska. The hospital has now performed more than 2,600 adult and pediatric kidney transplants. On July 19, 1985, a team of UNMC surgeons led by Byers Shaw, M.D., and R. Patrick Wood, M.D., (now of Houston), performed the city’s first liver transplant. Fourteen liver transplants were performed that year, launching The Nebraska Medical Center’s Liver Transplant Program, the fourth of its kind in the nation at the time. More than 2,700 liver transplants have since been performed here.

Today UNMC and The Nebraska Medical Center will host a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Upper Storz Pavilion in recognition of the 40th anniversary of the medical center’s kidney transplant program and the 25th anniversary of its liver transplant program.

Comments from several people including UNMC Chancellor Harold M. Maurer, M.D., will be given at 3 p.m. and the people who helped launch these programs and make them what they are today will be recognized.

Videos also will be shown featuring the key physicians sharing their memories of how these two programs began.

“The patient always remains at the center of the experience,” said Alan Langnas, D.O., professor of surgery-transplant at UNMC and chief of the transplant program. “Everything we do from nursing care to physician staff, we always look at this as the patient at the middle of the entire experience.”