A place where patients and surgeons are actual heroes
The fast-growing living donor liver program at Hume-Lee was revived in 2019 on the hiring of Vinay Kumaran, M.D. (right) from a health system in India. VCU Health’s living liver surgical director, Kumaran has performed more than 800 living donor liver surgeries in his career. He is pictured with Seung Duk Lee, M.D., who has performed hundreds of robotic liver surgeries and has more than a decade of training using robotics.
Since 2020, Kelley & Co. has served as a close partner to VCU Health Hume-Lee Transplant Center. Our task is to tell the stories of the donors, living or deceased, and the recipients of those organs. One organ donated is one life saved.
The stories are filled with heartache, happiness, tragedy, and triumph. We interview families whose loved one has been saved by organ transplantation, brothers or sisters who have lost a parent or sibling and donated the organs, and everyday heroes, still living, who have the strength and honor to give part of a liver or an entire kidney to a friend, family member, or complete stranger.
The stories are raw and powerful. For Hume-Lee, these articles not only tell the stories of their patients and their people, but also spread the word about living donation and help others who may be facing such surgeries to understand what is to come. Many of these stories also begin within the VCU Health website, only to find their way into more mainstream news outlets. Here’s a sampling of our work.
Transplant rarity: Family donates loved one’s heart to a friend
Brisket delayed: a Thanksgiving one Hampton man will never forget
Tapping the robot for partial-liver transplantations
Two mothers, one heart: a transplant journey