At University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, our heart transplant team is at the forefront of a generation of breakthroughs in advanced heart failure and heart transplant. As leaders in innovative research, we are committed to bringing the science and art of medicine together to provide the best possible care for patients and their families. Our 30-year-old program is one of the longest-running heart transplant centers in the world.

Watch our advanced heart failure and 700th heart transplant videos




University of Minnesota Physicians offer the most recent and promising array of treatment options to people living with advanced heart failure, including heart transplant. Our surgeons have performed more than 680 heart transplants since our program began in 1978.
 

• 75 percent of heart transplant patients at our center survive five years or more, with 64 percent survival at 10 years — well above the national average. (See Success Rates.)
• Our surgeons performed the first heart transplant in Minnesota in 1978 and the state's first heart/lung transplant in 1986. 
• The nation's longest-living heart transplant recipient benefited from our innovative care for more than 25 years after surgery.  
• Our program is one of a few in the country that has an alternative donor program using older heart donors. Most transplant centers do not routinely accept older heart donors or older high-risk recipients. This program gives some of these patients a second chance at life that they would not otherwise have.
• We are a recognized pioneer in mechanical circulatory support bridge to transplant clinical trials. We are one of a handful of sites in the nation approved to train surgeons in transplant state-of-the-art technologies that include Thoratec HeartMate II, Ventracor VentrAssist, HeartWare and Centra Mac. 
• We are a national leader in implanting ventricular assist devies (VADs) performing more than 60 VADs each year. 
• Our experience and innovation makes it possible for most patients to leave University of Minnesota Medical Center less than two weeks after heart transplant. 
• Currently we perform about 40 heart transplants annually. This places our program among the top 10 to15 percent in the nation.

The attending surgeons in our program are fully committed to training fellows to become certified transplant surgeons with the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Our fellows enjoy a complete transplant experience — from being independent during donor procurement, to operating as a co-surgeon in the operating room, to making critical decisions during post-transplant care in the hospital. One unique feature in our program is that our fellows graduate with their full complement of required cases for UNOS certification.

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