Winter storm warnings continue in northern Minnesota 

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Mayo Clinic's organ transplant centers performed the most solid organ transplants in its history last year — 2,065 across its Minnesota, Arizona and Florida campuses.

It also performed more than any other hospital system in the country. 

“2025 was a record year,” said Julie Heimbach, a Mayo transplant surgeon and director of the hospital’s Rochester transplant center. “We surpassed our number for 2024 by just a little bit, and also for our number in 2023. But all three of those years were really our record-setting years. We have consistently been among the nation's highest volume transplant centers.” 

Heimbach said this accomplishment is due to the generosity of donors and donor families, and also the hospital’s ability to jump on new advancements in the industry.  

"The ability of our teams to do transplants is continuing to get better,” Heimbach said. “We're able to do more complex things than we've ever done before with outcomes that are continuing to be excellent."

One example is a technique where Mayo uses a machine to continuously pump oxygenated blood or special solutions through a donor organ to keep it viable longer, allow doctors to assess its function, and even repair issues before transplanting it. 

When someone’s alive, the heart does this work — circulating blood to bring nutrients to organs and keep them functioning, but when someone dies that stops. This method helps ensure that more donated organs can travel farther distances and work better for the recipient, said Heimbach. 

Mayo researchers are also focused on preventing organ rejection. When someone receives a donated organ, the immune system can sometimes begin to reject it. There’s one version of this that can typically be reversed, but Heimbach says chronic rejection is much more complicated. 

“It’s a more insidious process where there's scar tissue that just keeps building up,” Heimbach said. “It's not really easy to treat that type of rejection.”

A Mayo clinical trial is testing whether a special type of stem cell, which promotes healing and reduces scar tissue formation and inflammation, could prevent this from happening with kidney transplant recipients. Heimbach said if it’s successful, there is a lot of downstream potential. 

Heimbach said more than 100,000 people are waiting for a life-saving organ across the U.S.

Health

NewsPartners

Homepage

Molly Castle Work

Author

Mayo performed more solid organ transplants last year than ever before. The clinic and hospital system credits its commitment to research and new technology and the generosity of its organ donors.

Dr. Julie Heimbach, a Mayo Clinic transplant surgeon and director of Mayo Clinic Transplant in Rochester, performs a transplant surgery. 

Contributed | Mayo Clinic

Julie Heimbach, director of Mayo Clinic Transplant in Rochester, stands with a patient. 

Mayo Clinic performed record number of solid organ transplants in 2025

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox