On Friday, March 21, at 12:30 p.m., MeritCare transplant surgeon Dr. Bhargav Mistry, and the first and 500th patient to receive transplants in Fargo will be available to be interviewed.
While the 500th transplant is a worthy reason to celebrate, it's also important to note that nationally, there are close to 100,000 people waiting for a life-saving organ transplant, including more than 2,500 in the Upper Midwest. According to LifeSource (the non-profit organization dedicated to saving lives through organ and tissue donation in the Upper Midwest), each day, 17 people die while waiting for a transplant simply because there are not enough organs available. A new name is added to the transplant waiting list every 13 minutes.
MILESTONES:
1989 - Transplantation Services of Fargo was formed as a joint kidney transplant program of:
- Fargo Clinic and St. Luke's Hospital (now MeritCare)
- Dakota Clinic Ltd. (now Innovis Health)
- Dakota Hospital (Dakota later partnered with Heartland Medical Center - formerly St. John's and St. St. Ansgar hospitals - to become Dakota Heartland Health System and then was later acquired by MeritCare)
1999 - Transplantation Services announced that after 10 years of performing kidney transplants, they would, for the time being, not perform surgeries because they had no transplant surgeon. In the 10-year history of the program, 184 kidney transplants were performed. At this time, Dakota Clinic withdrew from the partnership.
2000 - MeritCare launched MeritCare Transplant Services as a solo venture; transplant surgeon Dr. Bhargav Mistry joins staff.
2001- MeritCare becomes the first hospital in North Dakota to perform a pancreas transplant.
2002
- The first simultaneous double transplant (kidney and pancreas) is performed at MeritCare.
- Surgeon Dr. Tim Monson joins the team and achieves a first by using a new minimally invasive surgical approach to remove a donor's kidney (laparoscopic donor nephrectomy) versus the traditional surgical approach.
2003
- The first Good Samaritan kidney transplant is performed at MeritCare. The program allows "non-directed" kidney donations, where a Good Samaritan can donate a kidney to someone in need.
- The first international transplant occurs at MeritCare when a woman from Welland, Ont., donates a kidney to a man from Walhalla, N.D. that she had met over the Internet.
- MeritCare hosts a live, surgical webcast of a minimally invasive removal of a kidney for transplant. The webcast gave people anywhere in the world the opportunity to view transplant surgery in action.
2005, 2006 and 2007 - MeritCare receives the Health and Human Services (HHS) Medal of Honor Award. This prestigious award is presented to hospitals and organ procurement organizations that achieve life-saving organ donation rates of 75 percent or more for a sustained 12-month period; the national average donation rate in all hospitals in 2005 was 59 percent.
2008
On Saturday, March 1, the first double-kidney transplant for one recipient at MeritCare. (When a single organ doesn't meet specific donation criteria, two organs are placed in one recipient to avoid wasting valuable organs.)
Additional information:
MeritCare's transplant program continues to meet the standards of care as required by monitoring agencies. The outcome of transplants performed at MeritCare is comparable to other transplant programs around the country.