Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) is an internationally recognized leader in transplant surgery services, providing world-class care for a wide spectrum of organ and tissue transplants, including kidney, pancreas, lung, heart, face, hand and bone marrow. Our transplantation programs draw upon the expertise of some of the country’s leading transplant surgeons, collaboration from an experienced multidisciplinary staff, groundbreaking research and state-of-the-art medical facilities to provide evaluation and treatment that is both innovative and reliable.

Our transplantation programs have a strong history, present and future. The world’s first successful human organ transplant, a kidney transplanted from one identical twin to another, was performed here by Joseph Murray, MD, in 1954. Dr. Murray was later awarded the Nobel Prize in 1990 to recognize this medical milestone and his subsequent development of immunosuppressive drugs to help prevent organ rejection. Other transplant firsts at BWH include the first heart transplant in New England (1984), the first heart-lung transplant in Massachusetts (1992), the nation’s first triple organ transplant — removing three organs, two lungs and a heart from a single donor  and transplanting them into three patients (1995) — and the world’s first quadruple transplant (2000). In the spring of 2009, our hospital was the setting for only the second face transplant in the United States, and we are now actively seeking other candidates who could benefit from this life-changing procedure. We continue to build upon this innovative spirit as part of our mission to do everything possible for our transplant patients and their families.

We welcome patients, physicians and family members to browse the rest of our site to learn more about the transplant services we provide, what patients should expect before, during and after transplant surgery, what we’re doing to improve transplant surgery, how to get in touch with us and more. 


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This page was last modified on 5/2/2012