Rogosin patient, S. Szlak, made history on December 27, 1967 receiving the first successful kidney transplant using extensive tissue compatibility testing done for the recipient and for the deceased donor kidney. Fifty years later, she continues to enjoy normal kidney function! The surgery was led by a team at Bellevue/NYU Medical Center in NYC, and she has since been receiving post-transplant care from transplant nephrologists at Rogosin.
Now, half a century later, she is in good health and enjoys caring for her 10 grandchildren. To celebrate the anniversary of her transplant, she is encouraging more people to become organ donors – both by registering to become a deceased donor, as well as considering becoming a living kidney donor. She wants everyone to know that people who receive kidney transplants can live a full and active life, as can those who are living donors.
Leading Rogosin nephrologists provide the pre and post-medical care at the kidney transplant program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, New York City’s premier kidney transplant center and the first formal transplant center in the metropolitan area. Rogosin’s Immunogenetics and Transplantation Center, one of the first providing testing for transplants, is now the largest immunogenetics and transplant laboratory in the Northeast – providing testing for four major NYC area transplant centers – and the numbers keep growing.
While common today, kidney transplants were still considered experimental in the 1960s. Thanks to cutting-edge medical advances through the years, in 2016 there were 19,0601 kidney transplants performed in the US from living and deceased donors. But more than 100,000 patients in the United States remain on the kidney transplant list, so the need for donor kidneys in the US continues to rise.
Please join us in helping others like Mrs. Szlak to have a wonderful quality of life.
To learn more about organ donation go to www.organdonor.gov, or visit www.liveonny.org
To learn more about the Transplant Program at NYP/Weill Cornell visit http://surgery.weill.cornell.edu/surgical-services/kidney-and-pancreas-transplantation
To learn more about Rogosin’s Immunogenetics and Transplantation Center, visit https://www.rogosin.org/patient-care/transplant/immunogenetics-and-transplantation-laboratory