After ceasing to perform pediatric liver transplant procedures, the UF Health Shands Transplant Center has partnered with a Miami hospital to transfer patients.
UF Health is working with the Miami Transplant Institute at Jackson Health System in Miami to help children who need pediatric liver transplants, wrote Rossana Passaniti, the media relations coordinator for UF Health, in an email. The center will continue to determine which patients are eligible for the transplants, refer them to MTI and continue to offer treatment after patients’ transplants.
The center stopped offering transplants Sept. 1 due to the low number of surgeries performed in the last few years, Passaniti said.
“We’re helping them transfer to the MTI waiting list, should they be willing to take them on,” she said. “Both transplant teams will do all they can so these families experience the best possible transition.”
She said the center has averaged three pediatric liver transplants each year for several years. The center has redirected its efforts toward other procedures, she said.
“We continue to care for children with complex liver conditions,” Passaniti said. “This includes about 100 children who receive post-liver transplant support at UF Health.”
Cheston Cozlowski’s infant son received a liver transplant eight years ago, she said. To get him the transplant, she drove from Jacksonville to Miami after she got a phone call at 2 a.m. telling her to bring her son to MTI.
Her son, Andrew, was born with biliary atresia, a rare liver and bile duct disease that blocks bile flow from the liver to the gallbladder, damaging liver cells in the process, she said. She said the disease affects one in 150,000 births.
Andrew was registered on the organ donor list when he turned 1, she said. He was on the list for about one month before receiving the life-saving liver.
Cozlowski, 38, said when she was deciding where to take her son for surgery, she had to choose between eight transplant centers, including UF Health.
After researching the different centers, Cozlowski brought Andrew to Miami. She said the surgeons in Miami had performed the largest number of successful transplants.
“I love UF, and I love Shands,” she said. “It just so happened that Miami had the best success rate.”
Cozlowski said she was not surprised to hear UF Health will no longer offer pediatric liver transplants.
Although she did not take her son to Shands for treatment, she said she was happy with the hospital and the organ transplant system as a whole.
“It gave my kid a second chance at life,” Cozlowski said.
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @k_newberg.
