Not long ago, transplants were rare, exotic surgeries performed on only a few patients. Today, however, transplants offer hope to thousands of individuals each year — hope for a longer life and an improved quality of life.

At the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), we have specialized in transplants for more than two decades.  In fact, we have the only Transplant Center in our state, and it is nationally recognized as one of the best for adults and children in need of liver, kidney, pancreas, heart and blood and marrow transplants.
 

Most patients come to the MUSC Transplant Center for two important reasons:

• Our outcomes are outstanding and among the nation’s best, despite the fact that we treat more than twice the national average of high-risk patients.
• The average waiting time to receive an organ transplant here is one of the shortest in the nation.

As part of MUSC, the Transplant Center offers patients the caring and compassion of a hometown hospital along with all of the benefits of a major academic medical center, including:

• Physicians trained at some of the country’s premier medical institutions
• Clinical expertise
• Innovative, proven techniques
• State-of-the-art facilities
• Leading-edge clinical trials
• The full support of the University and its considerable resources

Plus, we are located in one of the country’s most beautiful, warm and welcoming cities: Charleston.

It’s no wonder the MUSC Transplant Center continues to grow as patients throughout the Southeast and around the country increasingly come to us for lifesaving transplants.

Thanks to innovation and research, successful transplantation and rejection prevention are no longer significant medical challenges at MUSC. The challenge now is the increasing scarcity of organs available for transplant.

• More than 100,000 patients are on the national waiting list for organ transplant.
• Approximately 90 percent of people awaiting transplant in South Carolina are those on the kidney transplant waiting list.
• A large majority of patients awaiting kidney transplants are African Americans, and South Carolina’s kidney waiting list includes the second-largest percentage of African Americans among all state lists.

Because so many kidneys are needed, South Carolinians have an incredible opportunity to save the lives of their friends and neighbors by registering for organ donation.

Living donors are even more desperately needed to save the lives of transplant patients awaiting kidneys, blood and marrow. If you are in good health, please consider living organ donation and urge others to do the same.