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Comprehensive, collaborative approach to transplantation

This summer marks the first anniversary of Children's Hospital Boston's Pediatric Transplant Center (PTC), which is run by an interdisciplinary team of Children's heart, lung, liver, intestine, kidney and stem cell transplantation specialists. Their centralized, collaborative approach has proven to be beneficial to both patient families and physicians. Families are assured that Children's is using all of its resources to care for their children, and specialists are taking advantage of the new infrastructure to streamline quality improvement initiatives in areas common to all solid organ and stem cell cases.

"The formation of a unified center has allowed us to pool resources, creating a much more efficient system," says Heung Bae Kim, MD, director of the PTC and the surgical director of the Liver, Intestine and Multivisceral Transplant Program. "We've been able to take best practices from each program and apply them across the board." In its structure and spirit, the PTC mirrors the Transplant Research Center (TRC), founded in 2003 by Children's and Brigham and Woman's Hospital. Together, the PTC and TRC reaffirm Children's collaborative "bench-to-bedside" philosophy of care.

The strength of the PTC resides in its staff. In addition to Dr. Kim, members include Laura Krawczuk, RN, CPNP, who serves as the PTC's director of transplant nursing. She brings seven years of experience as a liver transplant coordinator and nurse practitioner to the role. Katherine Hadley, who brings more than five years experience in health care leadership, serves as the PTC's administrator.

They, along with medical and surgical specialists, nurses and support staff ranging from social workers to pharmacists, operate the following six programs in the Pediatric Transplant Center:

• Heart transplant - Has performed more than 160 transplants since the inception of the PTC in 1986
• Lung transplant - The Pulmonory faculty conducts intensive research on cystic fibrosis and immunology
• Liver transplant - Offers expertise in whole-liver, reduced-sized-liver, split-liver and living donor transplants
• Intestine and multivisceral transplant - Performed the first successful multivisceral transplant in New England and the world's smallest successful multivisceral transplant in a 7 lb. baby
• Kidney transplant - Participates in more active NIH-sponsored pediatric kidney transplant research protocols than any other program in the nation
• Stem cell transplant - One of the oldest and largest programs of its kind, with more than 1,100 transplants performed in children and adolescents with complex cancers since the 1970s

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