Inpatient Transplant Service
Kidney and kidney pancreas transplant services are provided at the University of Iowa Organ Transplant Center and at the affiliated VA Transplant Center. The University of Iowa transplant program is the only multi-organ transplant program (Kidney, Liver, Pancreas, Heart, Lung) in the State of Iowa. The VA transplant center is one of a handful of VA programs that perform kidney transplants and the only center that performs kidney pancreas transplants.
Stable transplant inpatients are cared for on a multidisciplinary transplant unit where Transplant Nephrology has admitting privileges and primary responsibility for patients admitted to the Transplant Nephrology Service. Transplant Nephrology also provides consultative services to Transplant Surgery and Transplant Hepatology as well as patients with kidney and liver transplants who are admitted to all other services including critical care units. The renal division has an AST accredited transplant nephrology fellowship program where 1 fellow is admitted per year.
Each general nephrology fellow will be assigned for 3 to 4 months on this transplant service, working with one of the Transplant Nephrology staff on the inpatient service and with several staff in the Transplant outpatient clinics, sometimes alongside the Transplant Nephrology fellow. During the course of the rotation the fellow will learn the indications and complications of transplantation, the psychological impact of transplantation, and the principles of histocompatibility testing relevant for kidney transplantation. The fellow will also be exposed to the process of assessing suitability for living-related donor transplantation and will acquire an understanding of the modes of action, pharmacology, and complications of immunosuppressive drug regimens.
By being involved in the workup and management of graft dysfunction, the fellow will learn to recognize the clinical pathology of acute and chronic rejection, drug toxicity, and recurrent primary disease and will gain experience in the needle biopsy of the transplanted kidney. In addition to the day-to-day management of the organ transplant service inpatients, the fellow will participate in the Outpatient Transplant Clinic and the Transplant Conferences.
Transplantation Clinics
The Transplantation clinics at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics and VAMC provide the opportunity for the fellow to participate in the outpatient evaluation of the pre-transplant patient and potential donors, as well as the immediate and long-term management of the immunosuppressive therapies and complications of the post-transplant patient.