“It took incredible vision, leadership and teamwork by our hospital and medical school leaders and clinical teams to perform our first living donor transplant,” said Nicole Turgeon, M.D., transplant director for the Adult Abdominal Transplant Center and professor in the Department of Surgery and Perioperative Care at Dell Med. “We are excited to be a center that treats the needs of Central Texans, and we look forward to delivering convenient and innovative transplant care to our community.”
More than 72,000 Texans are living with end-stage renal disease or kidney failure. Established in November 2021, the Adult Abdominal Transplant Center is a program at Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas that diagnoses, treats and manages the care of adult patients in need of a kidney, as well as those willing to be a living kidney donor.
The historic nature of the center’s inaugural transplant has special meaning for the UT Austin community: Rainelli’s mother is a Longhorn herself.
“When I saw an email saying UT Health Austin was beginning kidney transplantation last November, I thought, ‘How can I get him down here to get this done at UT?’” said Jamie Rainelli, an office manager at the university’s Office of Student Affairs. “We knew that Dom’s kidney function was worsening rapidly even over these past few months, and we were risking putting him on dialysis if we didn’t find a donor in time. But just like that, all the pieces seemed to fall into place. Kayla was a match, and we were set for surgery here at UT. It was definitely a ‘God thing,’” she said.
