Pediatric Kidney Transplant Program

UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh performed its first pediatric kidney transplant in 1964. Since then, UPMC Children's Hospital's transplant teams have performed kidney transplants on hundreds of children and teenagers, making UPMC Children's one of the most active pediatric kidney transplant centers in the world. The program's objective is to restore health and wellness to children suffering from end-stage renal disease.

UPMC Children's Pediatric Kidney Transplant Program, managed collaboratively by the Divisions of Pediatric Nephrology and Transplantation (the UPMC Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute), is one of the first programs in the world that used tacrolimus as its primary immunosuppressive agent. The use of tacrolimus has enabled the program to achieve long-term patient and graft survival rates that are among the best in the world, and also allowed the majority of children to be withdrawn from chronic maintenance steroids. The current regimens, which employ preconditioning with alemtuzumab, allow complete avoidance of steroids after transplantation.

The kidney transplant program at UPMC Children's includes living-donor and deceased-donor kidney transplantation and liver/kidney and multivisceral/kidney transplantation. In addition, UPMC Children's performed the world's first living-related pediatric kidney/bone marrow transplant.

Contact the Kidney Transplant Program at UPMC Children's

If you have questions, concerns, or unexpected needs about your child's kidney transplant, contact our team at 412-692-5182.