Giselle Guerra, MD

I am the Medical Director of the Kidney Transplant Program and Living Kidney Donor Program for over 7 years at the Miami Transplant Institute (MTI) along with acting Medical Director of Transplant Services for the last 10 years. The mission of this kidney program is to not only have continued excellence for our recipients; but also impart an increased possibility of transplanting the right kidney into the right recipient. This has allowed us to further understand the capabilities of using what we consider expanded or marginal kidneys; and thus learn how to best optimize them in order to help save more lives.  In addition, further reviews of donor recipient pair matching and ongoing customizing of different immunosuppressive medications for kidney transplant recipients has occurred under my guidance in order to increase the possibility of obtaining better results while growing the number of patients transplanted.  Consequently, over the last few years, the MTI became the largest kidney transplant program in the United States breaking the US history record by a single transplant center with 502 kidneys in 2019. This level of care has persisted in 2020 in the midst of a pandemic - COVID19 providing not only clinical excellence but also innovative research to help increase survival in such a susceptible patient population with achieving mortality rates under 20% in those most afflicted.  The ongoing high volume of transplants has continued into 2023, ranking us always in the top 4 leading transplant centers. With my current leadership and mentoring position, various projects have also taken place allowing several faculties to rise in professional ranking over the years and thus leading to new discoveries in patient care, the latest being Xenotransplantation (current role as clinical medical director at one of the main sites within the US). Interestingly enough our diverse population has also allowed us to participate in many other essential research projects such as NIH funded APOLLO study and HOPE trial.  My publications include over 112 peer-reviewed manuscripts thus far.  Therefore, this level of commitment will continue to spearhead important discoveries in the field of kidney transplantation in both living and deceased donation and recipient care that includes immunosuppression, rejection, infections in kidney transplant patients at our center.