Prisma Health to offer transplant services this year

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Prisma Health is launching an organ transplant program to serve the Upstate and Midlands.

Prisma Health CEO Mark O’Halla said in a news conference today that development is already underway and Dr. Todd Merchen has been hired to head up the new program. Kidney transplants could take place at Prisma Health before the year is over, he said.

O’Halla said the size of Prisma Health — which serves 1.2 million patients in the state — makes the program viable. There is also a significant need, he said. More than 100 kidney transplants took place last year in the Upsate and Midlands, with one of every three patients leaving the state to find care.

“Our goal is to provide critically ill patient with lifesaving transplants in the areas closer to where they live and to respond to the rising need for transplants across the communities we serve,” O’Halla said. Moving forward, he said other solid organ transplants may be offered, such as transplants of pancreas and liver.

Dr. Will Cobb, chair of surgery for Prisma Health, cited his father’s out-of-state transplant 15 years ago as his family’s personal example of the additional burden required to travel for transplant surgery.

“It’s important to point out that the care of a transplant patient is quite labor intensive,” he said. “It requires significant ongoing care, not only for the initial screening process but also for the follow-up care after successful transplant surgery. Now, having this ability to offer kidney transplants close to home will help ease the burden felt by our patients and their families.”

In the United States, more than 119,000 people are currently on the organ transplant list with more than 99,000 of those waiting for kidney transplants, said a Prisma Health news release citing the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

According to the network, the number of kidney transplants is up 7% nationally. In 2019, 22,641 adult kidney transplants were performed across the country, up from 21,159 in 2018. There were 277 kidney transplants in South Carolina in 2019, up from 234 in 2018 — an increase of more than 18%.