Another record-breaking year for transplants at Intermountain Health — 6th year in a row

Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Dr. Alan Contreras emphasizes organ donors as heroes in Intermountain Health's transplant success.
• Intermountain achieved a record 489 successful transplants in 2024, with significant increases in kidney and liver transplants.
• The health system's shorter wait times result from improved donor connections and utilizing organs others might discard.

MURRAY — Dr. Alan Contreras saves people's lives for a living as a transplant surgeon for Intermountain Health.

The way he tells it, though, he's just doing his job. The organ donors are a different story.

"I refer to this big team that we are a part of, but no doubt the most important part of this team is the donor. They are our heroes," said Contreras, the surgical director of liver transplants at Intermountain. He performs liver, kidney and pancreas transplantation. "Without (organ donors), there is no possibility of transplant ... and to have an impact on someone's life, it's very humbling."

Monday morning, surgeons at Intermountain Health celebrated their sixth consecutive record breaking year regarding transplants performed at the hospital. In 2024, 489 successful transplants were performed by the health system, staff reported.

Not only were these transplant numbers an increase compared to the year prior, but some presented record rises. There was a 34% increase in the number of kidney transplants between 2023 and 2024, but compared to 2019, there was a 214% increase in successful kidney transplants.

Intermountain saw a 385% increase in the number of successful liver transplants between 2018 and 2024.

The wait times for some transplants were considerably shorter than the national average as well. For example, Dr. Donald Morris, the Intermountain kidney transplant medical director, noted that the wait time for kidney transplants is an average of 109 days, from the time someone gets on the transplant list to surgery. The national average is between three to four years.

The reason for the shorter averages, Morris said, has to do with a better ability to connect organ donors with those who need the kidney that is available. Surgeons are also not limited to only use the organs of those who have died, at least not with liver, kidney or pancreas transplants. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, there was a 24% increase in living donors overall between 2014 and 2019. More organs are hence available for those in need.

The surgeons also use the organs that other locations may not use due to matching issues. Rather than be discarded, the organ is used at Intermountain, Morris said.

Tom McLelland, of Provo, received his kidney after two-and-a-half years of dialysis. Back in those days, he could barely walk to the end of the block. Now, he takes a regular trip to the gym. There are many people involved in getting him to where he is today, he said — doctors, medical staff, people who kept him and his wife informed — but the donor was key.

The waiting process included finding a volunteer who was a friend of a friend to donate, finding out that new friend had a kidney that could not match him but would match someone else, and then more waiting. Eventually, a kidney came his way. He is grateful to the kidney donor whose organ keeps him alive.

"When you say it's a gift of life, that sounds generic," McLelland said. "Even the word 'life-changing' sounds dull compared to what it's done for me. It's an understatement."

Morris finds the strength of donors to be incredible. Deceased donors chose beforehand to donate their organs at the most traumatic point in their lives — their deaths. Living donors donate to whomever they can help — sometimes it is someone they know, oftentimes it is someone they do not.

A team of people is involved in successful transplants. Morris called the field "the story of pioneering work," referring to professionals who started and continue to push the field forward.

But without a donor, there is no transplant.

"Those who sign up to be an organ donor and also the remarkable story of living donors ... there is a story," he said. "Sometimes, there is a complex story behind, say, that donor's death ... so we have to look at each organ as it becomes available. And we make a game-time decision with what we have."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Ivy Farguheson

Ivy Farguheson is a reporter for KSL.com. She has worked in journalism in Indiana, Wisconsin and Maryland.