Our Adult and Pediatric Intestinal or Multivisceral Transplant Program

If you have a serious disorder of the intestinal tract affecting your ability to obtain nutrition by eating and drinking, our team is well prepared to evaluate your condition and determine the best course of treatment. That might be a transplant of the small intestine, a multi-organ transplant, or our state-of-the-art intestinal rehabilitation program.

Our multidisciplinary team focuses on saving the lives of children and adults, and restoring the best possible function of the digestive tract.

The Miami Transplant Institute is a recognized leader in these transplant procedures:

The Miami Transplant Institute is one of the few transplant centers in the U.S. that perform intestinal and multivisceral transplants on both children and adults. We have more than 25 years of experience, performing nearly 500 of these challenging procedures with outcomes well above national averages. In many cases, our transplant patients are transplanted without a temporary ostomy bag, significantly improving their quality of life.

Our program includes the simultaneous transplantation of multiple abdominal organs if needed depending on original condition, including the stomach, duodenum, pancreas, small intestine, and liver. Today, our team can transplant from two to seven organs at one time, even transplanting the abdominal wall with skin in patients who have lost those tissues due to their underlying disease and prior surgeries.

We have the only pediatric intestinal and multivisceral transplantation program in the southeastern U.S. and have performed over 250 transplants since the program opened in 1994. We continue to be one of the most active ​pediatric programs in the nation with higher survival rates compared to the national average. We evaluate ​our patients from an early age to make sure their parenteral nutrition is optimized for proper growth and development and perform transplants when necessary.

A minority of patients with intestinal failure will have irreversible disease that prevents their digestive tracts from absorbing life-sustaining nutrients. Despite efforts at rehabilitation, these patients will require lifelong parenteral nutrition (intravenous (IV) feeding). While we can often help optimize parenteral nutrition, ultimately the goal of rehabilitation is to help patients gain their nutrition from food. Some patients may develop life threatening complications of parenteral nutrition such as liver failure, clots that lead to loss of venous access, and catheter-related infections. In these situations, an intestinal transplant may be indicated.

Along with deceased donor intestinal and multivisceral transplants, we are a leader in autologous transplant procedures. For patients who require the reconstruction of damaged blood vessels or removal of slow-growing cancers, where such procedures cannot be performed in the abdomen, auto-transplantation offers an advanced solution. Our expert surgeons can remove multiple abdominal organs, perform a tumor removal or reconstruction outside the patient’s body, and then return the repaired organs to the patient like a transplant, without the need for immunosuppression.

By offering both transplant and restorative options, our program gives new hope to children and adults with life-threatening digestive conditions.