MyNemours Sign-InChildren tell stories about receiving life-changing organ transplants at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children.
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In Their Own Words
With more than two decades of experience and hundreds of successful transplants, our Solid Organ Transplant team oversees one of the largest pediatric liver and kidney transplant programs in the country. If your child has end-stage kidney or liver disease, our team can offer comprehensive evaluation, treatment, and ongoing care.
The Transplant Evaluation
To make sure that a transplant is the best treatment option and to see if your child is a good candidate for a transplant, we’ll start the transplant evaluation (or “work up”) process, which will involve:
- a meeting with members of your Nemours transplant team, which includes a surgeon, social worker, transplant coordinator, and a specialist such as a hepatologist for children with liver disease or a nephrologist for children with kidney disease
- a comprehensive physical examination
- a medical history, including making sure all routine immunizations are up to date and that your child has been taking all medications and following the recommended diet
- consultations, which are meetings with specialists in areas like the kidneys, liver, heart, infectious diseases, hearing, and psychology
- tests, such as blood work, a chest X-ray, abdominal ultrasound, hearing test, heart tests like an electrocardiogram/EKG, and an electroencephalogram/EEG to detect brain abnormalities
The transplant evaluation can be done in steps, either in a Nemours clinic or in the hospital depending on how sick your child is at the time of evaluation. We do these tests and consultations so that we can evaluate your child as a whole and make sure that any problems are addressed pre-transplant. Once all studies are done a member of the transplant team will call you to set up another meeting.
