Tampa General Expands Patients’ Access to Lifesaving Transplants Through the Largest Center Based Liver Perfusion Program in the World

With its 1,000th liver perfusion, TGH has nearly doubled its liver transplant surgeries and reduced median patient wait time to less than a month. 

Tampa, Fla. (October 20, 2026) – Tampa General Hospital (TGH) Transplant Institute, home to the world’s largest center-based liver normothermic machine perfusion program, has completed its 1,000th liver perfusion. The milestone reflects the impact of TGH’s in-house expertise: More patients can receive lifesaving liver transplants; experience shorter waits; and the have opportunity to undergo surgery before liver disease affects them more seriously.

TGH performed its first liver perfusion in October 2022 and has used normothermic machine perfusion (NMP) for every liver transplanted at the hospital since September 2023. By making perfusion a routine part of liver transplantation, TGH has helped expand the number of donor organs available to its patients and has nearly doubled the size of its liver transplant program.

Normothermic machine perfusion maintains a donor liver outside the body at near-normal body temperature while circulating oxygenated blood and nutrients. This allows the transplant team to assess how the liver functions before transplantation and evaluate organs that otherwise might go unused.
For TGH patients, the median time from placement on the waiting list to transplant is now less than one month. Greater access allows patients to receive transplants earlier in the course of their disease. This reduces the time they spend suffering from liver failure and the risks associated with arriving at surgery in a more critically ill condition.

“The significance of this milestone is what it means for our patients and our community,” said Dr. Kiran Dhanireddy, vice president and chief of the TGH Transplant Institute and surgical director of liver transplantation. “We have built a team with preeminent technical expertise in liver machine perfusion and made that expertise part of everyday care. This has allowed us to transplant more patients sooner, before they become as critically ill, and reduce both their time waiting and their suffering from liver disease.”

TGH’s center-based model brings this technical expertise into the hospital’s own transplant and organ perfusion teams. The hospital’s experience in managing perfusion and assessing donor livers supports decisions about which organs can be used for patients awaiting transplantation.
“Our experience goes beyond operating a machine,” said Dr. Vijay Subramanian, transplant surgeon and director of Liver Machine Perfusion at the TGH Transplant Institute. “It is about understanding how each liver performs during perfusion and applying that knowledge to transplant decisions. Having that expertise within our own team allows us to make the most of each opportunity to help a patient.”

“This accomplishment represents years of investment in people, technology and infrastructure,” said Erik Ale, manager of organ perfusion with the TGH Transplant Institute. “It is a testament to the expertise of our multidisciplinary transplant team and our commitment to advancing the future of transplantation while giving more patients a second chance at life.”

The liver perfusion milestone builds on more than 50 years of organ transplantation at Tampa General, which has performed more than 15,000 such procedures. The TGH Transplant Institute performed 895 transplants across its programs in 2025 and remains one of the nation’s top five transplant centers by volume.